 |
|
Fragment of Yellow Fever Virus May Hold Key to Safer Vaccine
June 17, 2005In one of the first molecular studies of the human antibody response to yellow fever, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers and their colleagues have found the crucial bit of virus that people's immune systems need to spot and quash this often-fatal re-emerging disease.
The findings may help scientists improve the existing vaccine, which has rare but severe side effects, said Jan ter Meulen, an HHMI international research scholar and associate professor of virology at Leiden University Medical Center in The Netherlands.
The group has identified a specific region on one of the viral proteins that elicits an immune response. Antibodies produced by the immune system interact with this part of the protein, known as a neutralizing epitope, to fight off infection.
To protect people from the disease, yellow fever vaccines must contain this essential fragment of instruction to the immune system, said ter Meulen, senior author of a study published in the July 5, 2005, issue of the journal Virology and published early online.
These days, the horror of Ebola or Marburg hemorrhagic fever grabs more attention, but yellow fever is the original viral hemorrhagic fever. It strikes more than 200,000 people a year, mostly in Africa, killing about 30,000 of them, the World Health Organization estimates. No drug treatment is effective against the virus.
Since yellow fever is spread by mosquitoes, much of America has been safe from the disease thanks to control efforts aimed at the insects and a highly effective vaccine that has been available for 60 years. Vaccination is the key strategy for people living in and traveling to tropical Africa, South America, and several Caribbean Islands, where yellow fever is endemic.
In the last 20 years, however, yellow fever has been on the rise, mostly due to the lapse of immunization programs in high risk areas. More recently, serious and potentially fatal side effects from the vaccine have been reported, mainly in elderly persons in northern Europe.
"Yellow fever research was neglected because the vaccine was so effective," ter Meulen said. \\\\\\\
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
To protect people from the disease, yellow fever vaccines must contain this essential fragment of instruction to the immune system, said ter Meulen, senior author of a study published in the July 5, 2005, issue of the journal Virology and published early online.
These days, the horror of Ebola or Marburg hemorrhagic fever grabs more attention, but yellow fever is the original viral hemorrhagic fever. It strikes more than 200,000 people a year, mostly in Africa, killing about 30,000 of them, the World Health Organization estimates. No drug treatment is effective against the virus.
Since yellow fever is spread by mosquitoes, much of America has been safe from the disease thanks to control efforts aimed at the insects and a highly effective vaccine that has been available for 60 years. Vaccination is the key strategy for people living in and traveling to tropical Africa, South America, and several Caribbean Islands, where yellow fever is endemic.
In the last 20 years, however, yellow fever has been on the rise, mostly due to the lapse of immunization programs in high risk areas. More recently, serious and potentially fatal side effects from the vaccine have been reported, mainly in elderly persons in northern Europe.
"Yellow fever research was neglected because the vaccine was so effective," ter Meulen said. \\\\\\\
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Yellow Fever Current Events and Yellow Fever News RSSStudy of ancient and modern plagues finds common features
In 430 B.C., a new and deadly disease-its cause remains a mystery-swept into Athens. The walled Greek city-state was teeming with citizens, soldiers and refugees of the war then raging between Athens and Sparta.
Researchers discover strategy for predicting the immunity of vaccines
In the first study of its kind, researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Vaccine Center, Emory University, have developed a multidisciplinary approach involving immunology, genomics and bioinformatics to predict the immunity of a vaccine without exposing individuals to infection.
Smaller mosquitoes are more likey to be infected with viruses causing human diseases
An entomologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey, a division of the new UI Institute for Natural Resource Sustainability, says smaller mosquitoes are more likely to be infected with viruses that cause diseases in humans.
'Deadly dozen' reports diseases worsened by climate change
Health experts from the Wildlife Conservation Society today released a report that lists 12 pathogens that could spread into new regions as a result of climate change, with potential impacts to both human and wildlife health and global economies.
New West Nile and Japanese encephalitis vaccines produced
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have developed new vaccines to protect against West Nile and Japanese encephalitis viruses. The investigators created the vaccines using an innovative technique that they believe could also enable the development of new vaccines against other diseases, such as yellow fever and dengue fever, which are caused by similar viruses.
Ayurvedic nightshade deadly for dengue mosquito
Mosquitoes responsible for spreading disease are increasingly becoming resistant to synthetic insecticides. Now research published in the online open access journal BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine suggests that the berries of a weed common to India, Solanum villosum (S villosum), have potential for keeping mosquitoes at bay.
Findings reveal how dengue virus matures, becomes infectious
Biologists at Purdue University have determined why dengue virus particles undergo structural changes as they mature in host cells and how the changes are critical for enabling the virus to infect new host cells.
Researchers put the bite on mosquitoes
Few things sting like a mosquito's bite--especially if that bite carries a disease such as malaria, yellow fever, Dengue fever or West Nile virus. But if researchers from The University of Arizona in Tucson have their way, one day mosquito bites may prove deadly to the mosquitoes as well.
Disease-free mosquito bred to disease-carrier can have all disease-free progeny
A decade ago, scientists announced the ability to introduce foreign genes into the mosquito genome. A year ago, scientists announced the successful use of an artificial gene that prevented a virus from replicating within mosquitoes.
K-State biologist hopes mosquito can break viral chain
Most people do their best to avoid mosquitoes. But this summer Rollie Clem will play the wary host to his own homegrown swarm of Aedes aegypti, the yellow fever mosquito. He's made a room ready for them, and even a menu.
More Yellow Fever Current Events and Yellow Fever News Articles
 | Yellow Fever and the South by Margaret Humphreys "Humphreys is to be commended for a job well done. This superior study exhibits the canons of historical scholarship at their finest. The thesis is clearly stated and convincingly explicated. The research is exhaustive. The writing is felicitous and compelling. There is no hint of bias. The work will appeal to a wide audience, including historians of the South, historians of science and medicine,... |
 | An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Newbery Honor Book) by Jim Murphy 1793, Philadelphia. The nation's capital and the largest city in North America is devastated by an apparently incurable disease, cause unknown . . .In a powerful, dramatic narrative, critically acclaimed author Jim Murphy describes the illness known as yellow fever and the toll it took on the city's residents, relating the epidemic to the major social and political events of the day and to... |
 | Yellow Fever, Black Goddess: The Coevolution Of People And Plagues (Helix Book) by Christopher Wills In this remarkable account, evolutionary biologist Christopher Wills takes us on a voyage of discovery through the exotic pasts of the viruses and bacteria that periodically emerge with such disastrous results for our species. It is our knowledge of their secret lives, the eons spent quietly passing in and out of myriad other life forms, mutating and coadapting, that gives us hope of taming them.... |
 | The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History by Molly Caldwell Crosby In this account, a journalist traces the course of yellow fever, stopping in 1878 Memphis to "vividly [evoke] the Faulkner-meets-'Dawn of the Dead' horrors,"*-and moving on to today's strain of the killer virus. Over the course of history, yellow fever has paralyzed governments, halted commerce, quarantined cities, moved the U.S. capital, and altered the outcome of wars. During a single summer... |
| DOCTORS WHO CONQUERED YELLOW FEVER, THE, Landmark #78 by Ralph Nading Hill | |
 | Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson During the summer of 1793, Mattie Cook lives above the family coffee shop with her widowed mother and grandfather. Mattie spends her days avoiding chores and making plans to turn the family business into the finest Philadelphia has ever seen. But then the fever breaks out. Disease sweeps the streets, destroying everything in its path and turning Mattie's world upside down. At her feverish... |
 | Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague Of Yellow Fever In Philadelphia In 1793 by J. H. Powell "A brilliant and model treatment of one of the most macabre incidents in American... |
 | Yellow Fever: A Deadly Disease Poised to Kill Again by James L. Dickerson Yellow Fever is unlikely to be found on a list of potential health threats facing Americans today. Most people, if they have heard of the disease at all, would consider it a historical curiosity from a bygone era. In this fascinating study of a once-terrifying pandemic, author James L. Dickerson makes it clear that the disease could reemerge with deadly virulence. In a vividly told narrative,... |
 | Yellow Fever by Steffan Piper Have you ever been so in love with a woman that you would go to the ends of the earth for, or take your life, willingly, in the street for? No? … “Come now … We are men of action. Lies do not become us.” Qianqian (chin-chin), a twenty-two-year-old living in Los Angeles, is a mixed-up Asian woman struggling with her career as a well-paid but restless stripper. She spends her life... |
 | A History Of The Yellow Fever: The Yellow Fever Epidemic Of 1878 In Memphis, Tennessee by John McLead Keating This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our... |
| © 2008 BrightSurf.com |