May 2015

The FDA approved label warning changes for two Gilead Sciences hepatitis C drugs after one person died and nine others had serious reactions when the drugs were coadministered with amiodarone, a drug used to treat irregular heartbeat.

A Philadelphia program operating in underserved neighborhoods found that residents chronically infected with the hepatitis C virus often lacked access to screening as well as treatment for the disease.

Skin-to-skin contact is not necessary to spread the virus that is responsible for over 50% of gastroenteritis cases worldwide.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers have developed a new vaccine type that shows promise to possibly become the first ever for preventing genital herpes.

In patients with chronic HBV, the immune system may have very low levels of the virus. When reactivation occurs due to immunosuppression, these viruses begin to replicate again. Common symptoms of this event include inflammation of the liver and elevations of liver enzyme levels in the blood. In some cases, bilirubin levels may rise in response to reactivation of infection.

American researchers suggest that households can serve as long-term reservoirs for USA300, a virulent and easily transmissible strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococus aureus (MRSA) and the predominant community-associated MRSA clone in the United States.

A survey of 571 US hospitals regarding practices used to prevent Clostridium difficile infection indicates that nearly half of the facilities appear to not be taking steps to prevent the infection that kills nearly 30,000 people and sickens hundreds of thousands more each year, despite strong evidence that these steps work.

Mosquito bites are not just itchy and annoying

Research has shown that Ebola virus disease (EVD) not only has the power to survive on plastic surfaces and spread through sexual transmission, the disease has also proven to last in another place.