Viruses and pathogens

  • CDC study finds raw milk is most likely source of dairy outbreaks

    A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finds thatraw milk is 150 times more likely to be the cause offood-borne illnesses than pasteurized milk; a growing number of states have permitted the sale of raw milk

  • Anthrax-decontamination foam used in meth lab cleanup

    The meth cleanup problem in the United States is a big one; the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration lists thousands of locations where law enforcement agencies have found chemicals or paraphernalia indicating the presence of either clandestine drug laboratories or dumpsites; Sandia’s decontamination foam, originally developed to deal with anthrax, is now also a meth eraser

    • University of Florida Clinical Toxicology Online Graduate Course. Chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction. Arm yourself with knowledge.
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  • Cell phone-based sensor detects E. coli

    Researchers have developed a new cell phone-based fluorescent imaging and sensing platform that can detect the presence of the bacterium Escherichia coli in food and water

  • Thwarting the botulinum neurotoxin

    The botulinum neurotoxin is the most poisonous substance known to man, causing botulism; it can be used by terrorists for deadly attacks; the toxin paralyzes muscle cells by disrupting their connections with the nerves that tell them how and when to move

  • Drug-resistant MRSA in livestock now infects humans

    A novel form of MRSA, a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus called ST398, can now be found in pigs, turkeys, cattle, and other livestock and has been detected in 47 percent of meat samples in the United States; the figures illustrate a very close link between antibiotic use on the farm and potentially lethal human infections

  • U.S. extends zero tolerance policy to six additional E.Coli serogroups

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken additional steps to fight E. coli in the food supply; the new policy adds six E. coli serogroups to the list of sergroups which are not allowed to be present in raw ground beef or the meat used to make raw ground beef; the beef industry says it will be too expensive to implement, and U.S. trading partners said preventing their beef from entering the U.S. unless tested for the six serogroups would violate existing trade agreement

  • Using ozone to kill prions dead

    Prions are among the worst infectious-disease agents; these proteins are resistant to a wide variety of extreme disinfectant procedures; they have been identified as the culprits behind mad cow disease and chronic wasting disease in animals and humans, and are also implicated in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and other prion-related disorders

  • Kansas biolab project on life support

    In 2008, DHS chose Manhattan, Kansas, as the location for a new, $650 million BioLab Level 4; the new lab was planned as a replacement for the aging Plum Island facility; critics argued that the lab’s location — in the middle of Tornado Alley and at the center a region which is home to a large portion of the U.S. beef industry – was not ideal for a facility doing research on deadly animal and human pathogens; it now appears that budgetary considerations have doomed to project

  • Discovery paves way for salmonella vaccine

    More than 1.4 million cases of salmonella occur annually in the United States, at an estimated cost of $3 billion and the loss of 580 lives; around the world, this increasingly antibiotic-resistant food-borne bacteria that kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year; , immunologists have taken an important step toward an effective vaccine against salmonella

  • Georgia Tech’s software for rapid analysis of food-borne pathogens

    A team of Goergia Tech bioinformatics graduate students, led by a biology professor, worked in close collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to create an integrated suite of computational tools for the analysis of microbial genome sequences

  • A bioterrorism threat for the birds?

    In his first guest column, Leonard A. Cole, an expert on bioterrorism and on terror medicine who teaches at Rutgers University, explores the recent controversy over bird flu research, its implications on national security, and why efforts to curb information regarding the research will likely have limited success

  • Compound to help combat antibiotic-resistant superbugs

    Chemists have created a compound that makes existing antibiotics sixteen times more effective against recently discovered antibiotic-resistant “superbugs”

  • Electron beam reduces virus-related health risk in lettuce, spinach

    Current health-care costs in the United States associated with foodborne viruses are estimated at about $6 billion; scientists show that electron-beam irradiation can reduce the health risks in iceberg lettuce and spinach, but note that electron-beams are not meant to be used as a “stand-alone” or “clean-up” technology

  • Cold plasma reduces harmful bacteria on raw chicken

    Recent high-profile outbreaks of foodborne illness have involved contaminated fresh produce, but the most common source of harmful bacteria in food is uncooked poultry and other meat products; studies have shown that plasma could successfully reduce pathogens on the surface of fruits and vegetables without cooking them, and scientists demonstrates that plasma can be an effective method for killing pathogens on uncooked poultry

  • Understanding – and averting -- drug resistance in bacteria

    Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is growing exponentially, contributing to an estimated 99,000 deaths from hospital-associated infections in the U.S. annually; one reason that this is happening is that drug resistant proteins are transporting “good” antibiotics, or inhibitors, out of the cells, leaving them to mutate