News by Subject Biology

José Enrique Mejía, Inserm researcher at Unit 1043 Center for Pathophysiology of Toulouse Purpan and Cristina Domingo from the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin have recently shown that around half of children initially protected by the yellow fever vaccination at 9 months of age lose that protection within the next 2 to 5 years, due to disappearance of the neutralizing antibodies. This research has been published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Rubbing hands with ethanol-based sanitizers should provide a formidable defense against infection from flu viruses, which can thrive and spread in saliva and mucus. But findings published this week in mSphere challenge that notion -- and suggest that there's room for improvement in this approach to hand hygiene.

Bat-borne influenza viruses enter host cells by utilizing surface exposed MHC-II molecules of various species, including humans. Now, an international research team from Germany (Medical Center -- University of Freiburg and Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, island of Riems) and the United States (Colorado State University, Fort Collins and Kansas State University, Manhattan) addressed concerns about the zoonotic spill-over potential and discovered an unexpected high genetic plasticity of the bat influenza virus H18N11 with unpredictable consequences.

Mosquitoes are more likely to acquire the dengue virus when they feed on blood with low levels of iron, researchers report in the 16 September issue of Nature Microbiology. Supplementing people's diets with iron in places where both iron deficiency anemia and dengue fever are a problem could potentially limit transmission of the disease, but there are risks.

A simple epidemiological model accurately captures long-term measles transmission dynamics in London, including major perturbations triggered by historical events. Alexander Becker of Princeton University in New Jersey, US, and colleagues present these findings in PLOS Computational Biology.

In the August 16, 2019 edition of Nature Scientific Reports, scientists at the University of Rhode Island provide concrete evidence linking the specific immune responses in HIV-negative babies to the HIV-positive status of their mothers.

The Epstein Barr virus (EBV) is very widespread. More than 90 percent of the world's population is infected -- with very different consequences. Although the infection does not usually affect people, in some it can cause glandular fever or various types of cancer. Researchers at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have now discovered why different virus strains cause very divergent courses of disease.

A new study conducted by Brazilian researchers found that Zika virus infects and replicates in adult human brain tissue. Scientists also found that infection causes long-lasting learning and memory deficits in adult mice. The results demonstrate that the adult brain (and not only the developing brain, as previously thought) is attacked and damaged by ZIKV, and indicate the need to investigate memory and cognitive deficits as potentially serious comorbidities in ZIKV-infected adults.