infectious disease

Antibiotic resistance is a rampant problem around the world. More than 23,000 deaths a year in the US are a result of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Bacteria become resistant to antibiotics in several ways. The antibiotic itself can be broken down, or…

Glioblastoma is one of the most deadly brain cancers because it is nearly impossible to destroy the cause of the cancer: cancerous stem cells. However, scientists are using Zika's preference for stem cells to target and eliminate the cancerous stem cells…

As mosquitoes develop resistance to insecticides used to control their populations, scientists have been developing new tools. The latest idea: infecting mosquitoes with a fungus genetically engineered to produce arachnid toxins. After infecting the…

Armigeres subalbatus mosquito of the ‘Nagasaki colony’ having a meal [Image: CDC/ Frank Collins, PhD. acquired from Public Health Image Library] With the warm weather of summer quickly approaching, a common enemy known as the mosquito will…

The Zika virus has lately been a global focus due to its connection to deformities in newborns. A recent report by the CDC has bolstered the suspicion that Zika is sexually transmittable from men to women, which was previously only supported by a handful…

  Ticks are small, but potentially dangerous arachnids that can spread Lyme disease to humans [Image: ‘Tick’ from John Tann under a CC BY 2.0 license]The already thorny process of diagnosing Lyme disease may have just gotten even hazier.…

by Rebecca Mandt We usually think of extinction of a species as a bad thing. But what if that species is directly causing human suffering or death on a global scale? The ultimate goal of disease eradication efforts is to target an infectious disease by…

The anti-retroviral drug Truvada; Author- Jeffrey Beall’s own work, from Wikimedia CommonsA recent study has delighted many by claims that taking the pill Truvada prevents HIV infection. The study is one of the first to test the pill in a real-world…

by Katherine Wu figures by Kristen Seim We live in an increasingly wired world: with apps for every purpose imaginable, it has become easier and easier to share information and build global communities. In the wake of the recent Ebola pandemic, we have…

Seasonal changes in our immune systems may have implications for human health [Image: The six ecological seasons under CC-BY 3.0 licence]. The variations in daylight duration and temperature that accompany the changing seasons are known to impact normal…