Vital Technologies, Inc.

When infected, the body has two types of immune defence to deploy innate immunity and acquired immunity. In her dissertation, Shanie Saghafian Hedengren studies monocytes, a type of white blood corpuscles that are part of the innate immune system. "Innate immunity plays a crucial role at the beginning of life as protection against bacteria and other microbes, since the acquired immune system is not fully developed at that stage.

On the eve of an international meeting bringing together 200 African researchers to discuss progress on research for neglected tropical diseases (NTD), Merck & Co., Inc. and the not-for-profit Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) announced a master agreement to support discovery and development of improved treatments for NTDs. The agreement covers a wide range of NTDs including visceral leishmaniasis and Chagas disease that infect millions of people.

The European Medicines Agency has been formally notified by Menarini International Operations Luxembourg S.A. of its decision to withdraw its application for a centralised marketing authorisation for the medicine Factive (gemifloxacin), 320 mg film-coated tablets. Factive was expected to be used for the treatment of bacterial infections causing mild to moderate community-acquired pneumonia and acute exacerbation of chronic bronchitis.

Ceragenix Pharmaceuticals, Inc.("Ceragenix") (OTCBB:CGXP), a medical device company focused on infectious disease and dermatology, announced that researchers at National Jewish Health, led by Dr. Donald Y. Leung and Dr. Michael Howell, in collaboration with Dr. Paul B.

Warts are skin growths which are caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV) - they are non-cancerous. The virus causes keratin, a hard protein in the epidermis (the top layer of the skin) to grow too fast. Warts are different from moles. While moles are dark and can be quite large, warts tend to be small, skin-colored rough lumps. Warts most commonly appear on a person's hands and feet. In this article we shall look at various types of warts, but not genital warts.

A global healthcare senior executive has called the latest infection threat to confront the NHS "a national epidemic". Whilst Government statements imply that hospital acquired infections are in decline Jim Taylor, a former Smith & Nephew President and now CEO of infection prevention specialist Saniguard International, says that Norovirus is now an increasing threat to our NHS wards.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday at the Rotary International (RI) Annual Convention in Birmingham, U.K., said that governments worldwide should continue to work towards eradicating polio, BBC reports. Ban said polio is endemic in four countries - down from 125 countries in 1985 when RI launched its campaign, which has so far raised $250 million to eradicate the disease - BBC writes.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to eat California Prime Produce and Orange County Orchards brands of pistachios repacked by Orca Distribution West Inc., Anaheim, Calif. Orca received and repacked pistachios recalled by Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc., Terra Bella, Calif.

Shingles is caused by the herpes varicella-zoster (or simply zoster) virus. This virus also causes chickenpox. Most of us get chickenpox during childhood, but after we recover the virus remains inactive (dormant) in our nervous system. Our immune system stops the virus from becoming active. However, later in life it may become reactivated, causing shingles. Shingles is an infection of a nerve and the area of skin around it. According to Medilexicon's

Research at the University of Leicester is focussing on a major killer in UK hospitals. In England and Wales, the national health statistics in 2007 showed that there were 8,324 death certificates which named Clostridium difficile. This is a bacterium which causes severe diarrhoea in humans and animals as the underlying cause of death, a 28% increase from 2006.

Arlington Medical Resources (AMR), a provider of premier market intelligence for the pharmaceutical and diagnostic imaging industries, finds that for the July - December 2008 time period, skin and skin structure infections continue to be the second most common diagnoses for which an antibiotic is used in the hospital setting. Antibiotic use for these infections is up 3 percent compared to the January - June 2008 time period.

For more than 3000 years, hundreds of millions of people have died or been left permanently scarred or blind by the relentless, incurable disease called smallpox. In 1967, Dr. D.A. Henderson became director of a worldwide campaign to eliminate this disease from the face of the Earth. SMALLPOX - THE DEATH OF A DISEASE: THE INSIDE STORY OF ERADICATING A WORLDWIDE KILLER (Prometheus Books, $27.98) is Dr.

MRSA Survivors Network, the Chicago-based nonprofit and the official organization that launched World MRSA Day earlier this year is building momentum in the US, the UK and worldwide in its humanitarian grass-roots effort to raise awareness of the MRSA epidemic.

MRSA infections that are transmitted between dogs/cats and their human handlers, and vice-versa, are increasing-with infections of the skin, soft-tissue, and surgical infections the most common. This and other bite-related and septic syndromes caused by cats and dogs are discussed in a Review in the July edition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases, written by Dr Richard Oehler, University of South Florida College of Medicine, Tampa, FL, USA, and colleagues.

"Global health funding boosted by private donors has quadrupled since 1990, but the extra money has not always gone to the right countries and diseases, according to a pair of studies released Friday," in the journal Lancet, AFP/Google.com reports (Hood, AFP/Google.com, 6/18). In one

BBC examines a campaign in sub-Saharan Africa that is helping to distribute drugs to prevent onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness - a disease "caused by a parasite that is spread from human to human by the black fly, which once flourished along river beds where there is fast-flowing water.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) commented on figures released by the Health Protection Agency (HPA) on healthcare associated infections between January and March 2009. The figures show that while infection rates are significantly lower than they were in the same quarter of last year, they are slightly higher than those of the previous quarter.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are warning consumers not to eat any varieties of prepackaged Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough due to the risk of contamination with E. coli O157:H7 (a bacterium that causes food borne illness). The FDA advises that if consumers have any prepackaged, refrigerated Nestle Toll House cookie dough products in their home that they throw them away.

An estimated 675,000 Americans died from the A/H1N1 pandemic influenza in the United States in 1918-1919. Many of these deaths were from ensueing bacterial pneumonia rather than directly from the viral infection. The United States Public Health Service conducted surveys in twelve cities and rural areas of the country in late 1918 to early 1919 to determine the case-fatality rate in each city or area. Case-fatality rates varied from 0.78 deaths/100 cases in San Antonio, Texas to 3.

Dr. Denis Therien, Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) of McGill University has welcomed the Canada Foundation for Innovation's (CFI) investment of $32,649,184 supporting five projects led by Dr. David Plant, Dr. Paul Lasko, Dr. David Thomas, Dr. Vincent Giguère and Dr. Chao-Jin (C.J.) Li. The Quebec government also confirmed it would match that funding.