All news from Health Policy in India
US health regulators have approved the first new type of flu drug in decades. Approval of Xofluza for people age 12 and older comes ahead of the brunt of this winter's flu season. Xofluza is a pill that can reduce the severity and shorten duration of flu symptoms after one just dose. It was developed by the Roche Group and Shionogi & Co. It works about as well as Tamiflu, Roche's older flu treatment, which is also available in cheaper generic versions. Tamiflu is taken twice daily for five days.
Among pregnant women, the flu vaccination is effective at reducing the risk for flu-related hospitalizations, according to a study published online Oct. 11 in Clinical Infectious Disease
A new animal study published in The FASEB Journal reveals a significant link between HBV and the metabolic pathway of bile salts that could have implications for a new therapeutic strategy for HBV treatment
A team of researchers has now engineered a virus nanoparticle vaccine against Bacillus anthracis and Yersinia pestis, tier 1 agents that pose serious threats to national security of the United States. B. anthracis and Y. pestis are the pathogens that cause anthrax and plague, respectively. The study is published in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
Researchers developed a novel DNA influenza vaccine based on four micro-consensus antigenic regions selected to represent the diversity of seasonal H3N2 viruses across decades. The DNA vaccine protected mice against a lethal challenge with more than one influenza-A H3N2 virus.
It also protected them from severe H3N2-related illness despite the lack of an exact sequence match between the vaccine immunogen and H3 immunogen. The findings are reported in a new Special Issue on DNA Vaccines in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.
Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have for the first time imaged the structure of a central component of the Ebola virus at near-atomic resolution.
A novel synthetic DNA vaccine developed based on pioneered by scientists at The Wistar Institute Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center offers complete protection from Zaire Ebolavirus (EBOV) infection in promising preclinical research. Study results were published online in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
A team of researchers from the U.S., Israel, and Canada has developed an adjuvant for use as an intradermal vaccine to reduce deaths when pandemics occur. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their work, the adjuvant they developed and how it might be deployed in case of a deadly outbreak.
High fever. Cough. Runny nose. Red, watery eyes. It may not be the flu. It could be measles. Measles cases are on the rise in Europe, with more than 40,000 cases and 37 deaths in the first six months of 2018. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that they've identified 124 measles cases in 22 states and the District of Columbia this year through August.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have isolated the first human monoclonal antibodies that can neutralize norovirus, the leading cause of acute gastrointestinal illness in the world.
New research elucidates the mechanism of sexual transmission of filoviruses, which have been shown to persist in the testes and other immune privileged sites. Sexual transmission of filoviruses was first reported in 1968 after an outbreak of Marburg virus disease and recently caused flare-ups of Ebola virus disease in the 2013-2016 outbreak. The team found that Marburg virus persists in seminiferous tubules and that Sertoli cells are the reservoir for the virus.
The United States researchers and health experts have expressed outrage and concern over Chinese government’s policy to withhold the samples of the rapidly evolving bird flu virus H7N9.
