Category: News

Highlights include person-to-person transmission of the NCov, new drug to stop drug-resistant flu, plant viruses: yes they exist, sweat more to prevent TB, blacklegged ticks are spreading an unnamed disease (blackleggedia?), and did the meteor bring a virus which will kill us all? More news to come. Happy Friday!

Note: No updates on the deaths of two people in China from H5N1 – the cases were of particular concern due to the inability of health investigators to establish connections between either case and infected poultry. Person-to-person? We’ll keep you posted. 

Human-to-Human Spread of New Virus Lifts Threat to EU

The UK patient infected with the novel coronavirus (NCov) after travelling in the Middle East has died, raising the number of deaths to seven (out of thirteen known infections). The virus was not thought to be contagious until two family members of the sickened UK patient also became infected.

Bloomberg – “Two probable cases of human-to-human transmission of the new coronavirus that’s killed six people increase the pathogen’s threat to the European Union, according to the bloc’s disease-tracking agency. The appearance of a mild case of the disease caused by the virus also raises concern because it suggests more people may be infected than are known, have few or no symptoms, and are spreading the bug to others, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said in a report late yesterday.”

New Flu Drug Stops Drug-Resistant Strains of Virus in Its Tracks

One of the reasons why the Influenza viruses are so difficult to handle is their phenomenal ability to mutate. Due the prevalence and high infectivity of the viruses, drug resistance is understandably a  cause for serious concern. A group of University of British Columbia researchers are seeking to mitigate this concern by developing drugs which inhibit neuraminidase binding in drug-resistant strains.

Science Daily – “Published online February 21 in the journal Science Express, the study details the development of a new drug candidate that prevents the flu virus from spreading from one cell to the next. The drug is shown to successfully treat mice with lethal strains of the flu virus. In order to spread in the body, the flu virus first uses a protein, called hemagglutinin, to bind to the healthy cell’s receptors. Once it has inserted its RNA and replicated, the virus uses an enzyme, called neuraminidase, to sever the connection and move on to the next healthy cell.”

Enemies no longer

Plants don’t get a lot of attention here at GMU Biodefense, which is unfair because they’re so prevalent. Plants have feelings too, right? Well no, but they can still catch viruses.

The Economist – “History casts a long shadow. Many of the first bacteria to be discovered were agents of disease, and that is how most people perceive bacteria to this day, even though less than 1% of them are pathogens. Something similar is turning out to be true of viruses, as Marilyn Roossinck of Pennsylvania State University told the AAAS meeting in Boston. Dr Roossinck works on plant viruses and she has assembled evidence suggesting a lot of such viruses are harmless to their hosts, and in some cases may actually be beneficial. That has implications for biology. It also has implications for agriculture.”

Scientists Unveil Secrets of Important Natural Antibiotic

So I have some bad news everyone. Apparently in addition to making you happier and prolonging your life, exercise may also save you from TB. Or, to be explicit, the secretion of the natural antibiotic dermcidin in sweat effectively kills bacteria which may enter at open cuts or wounds. The bad news? This makes avoiding exercise that much harder.

Science Daily – “These natural substances, known as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), are more effective in the long term than traditional antibiotics, because germs are not capable of quickly developing resistance against them. The antimicrobials can attack the bugs’ Achilles’ heel — their cell wall, which cannot be modified quickly to resist attack. Because of this, AMPs have great potential to form a new generation of antibiotics.”

New tick-borne bacteria found in Shasta County

Blacklegged ticks are well established vectors for Lyme disease. However, the arthropods are now apparently carrying a recently discovered bacteria, Borrelia miyamotoi, which causes an as-yet-unnamed disease. The bacterium was first found to be pathogenic to humans in 2011, with the first US cases occurring in New England in January of this year. It’s now been found on the West Coast.

The Record Searchlight – “The bacteria have been found in ticks in 19 of California’s counties, including Shasta, Siskiyou and Trinity counties, according to the state Department of Public Health. Symptoms of the disease are similar to Lyme disease, which is caused by a bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi, according to the state…It could be that the disease hasn’t been found in Shasta County, or anywhere else in California, because no one has been looking for the bacteria in sick people, district Vector Ecologist John Albright told the trustees during a board meeting Tuesday.”

Oddball Piece: Chelyabinsk meteor brought a dangerous virus to Earth?

OK, technically this shouldn’t be an oddball piece. There are whole scientific theories dedicated to the possibility of life on our planet being starting with alien bacteria, right? It’s just, we saw this and immediately thought, “Killer Viruses from Outer Space!!” Which made us laugh. So we included it. Happy Friday? [extra points if you can tell us what a “canny bolide” is]

The Voice of Russia – “This space guest which paid us a visit could actually be a Trojan Horse and physical damage from its explosion could be nothing compared to other potential dangers. This canny bolide that managed to sneak away from telescopes might have brought new viruses or bacteria to Earth.”

Highlights include H5N1 is making health investigators in China very nervous, the reasons why we are still leery of mutating it in the lab, bureaucratese strikes PAHPA, polymer sheets in bandages = less infection, the US fighting Ebola, and human life! now featuring bacteria. Happy Friday!

Bird Flu Death In China Sparks Fear Of Human-Transmitted H5N1 Strain

OK, now before you start making plans for that bird-flu apocalypse bunker, just put down the canned beets and listen for a sec.  It’s too early to tell. It’s entirely possible the health investigators missed a link. But also, and forgive the soapbox, this is exactly why things like a scientific moratorium on the potential aerosolization of H5N1 is so potentially dangerous.

International Business Times – “Health authorities in Guiyang, Guizhou province, announced that the 21-year-old woman, Shuai Pengyue, died on Wednesday due to multiple organ failure as a result of the flu. Shuai was one of two women reported in the area to have contracted the new strain of the avian influenza. Health officials have investigated the two of them and concluded that neither patient was in contact with poultry before showing symptoms of the illness. Victim proximity is important to note because typically, the bird flu is contracted by being in contact with poultry. In this case, health officials worry this could be signs that the H5N1 strain can now be transmitted between humans.”

The Deadliest Virus

This clearly isn’t a black and white issue, and both sides of the debate raise valid points. Here’s a good presentation of why we aren’t all gung-ho H5N1.

Harvard Magazine – “BIRD FLU (H5N1) has receded from international headlines for the moment, as few human cases of the deadly virus have been reported this year. But when Dutch researchers recently created an even more deadly strain of the virus in a laboratory for research purposes, they stirred grave concerns about what would happen if it escaped into the outside world. ‘Part of what makes H5N1 so deadly is that most people lack an immunity to it,’ explains Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) who studies the spread of infectious diseases. ‘If you make a strain that’s highly transmissible between humans, as the Dutch team did, it could be disastrous if it ever escaped the lab.’…Lipsitch, who directs the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at HSPH, thinks the risks far outweigh the rewards. Even in labs with the most stringent safety requirements, such as enclosed rubber ‘space suits’ to isolate researchers, accidents do happen. A single unprotected breath could infect a researcher, who might unknowingly spread the virus beyond the confines of the lab.”

Senate Panel Approves Revised Biodefense Proposals

PAHPA reauthorization, new and apparently improved in the Senate. The extent of the improvement? Changing bill language from “redployment” to “reassignment”. Yes, apparently this is a significant difference. No, representative was available to clarify why/how. No, we are not speculating.

NTI – “The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee sent the full chamber its own version of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act in place of a bill approved by the House of Representatives last month. The proposals are nearly identical, but the latest text would still require House endorsement upon receiving Senate approval. Congress failed in its previous session to reconcile separate reauthorization drafts endorsed by each side. ‘This was a reauthorization of this important act, and … we not only reauthorized it, we made it better,’ Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said in a morning session to mark up the legislation.”

Polymer controls bacteria and prevents antibiotic resistance

If viable, the potential implication of such bandages would be significant, especially in areas of higher risk of infection –  triage centers during a disaster or soldiers in theatre, for example.

The Engineer – “Researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm have discovered an antibacterial polymer that can be used in products including sportswear and bandages. It is claimed the discovery could be an important breakthrough in the search for environmentally-friendly ways to control bacteria while preventing antibiotic resistance and resistant bacteria.‘We have managed to find an antibacterial polymer that attaches stably to cellulose and therefore cannot be released into the environment,’ said Josefin Illergård, a chemistry researcher at KTH.”

US offers Shs26b to fight Ebola, Marburg

It’s bad form here at Mason Biodefense to go too long without talking about Ebola, but luckily the virus is remaining quiet. So instead, a little blurb about US efforts to keep it that way.

Uganda Daily Monitor – “The $10m (about Shs26b) project dubbed Emerging Pandemic Threat Programme aims at equipping doctors and veterinarians to strengthen their coordination in carrying out joint research and and treatment of zoonotic diseases.”

We are living in a bacterial world, and it’s impacting us more than previously thought

Are humans still human if the majority of our genome is derived from a common ancestor we share with bacteria? Is that a silly question? Maybe. For a thorough and thought-provoking piece on the role of bacterial species in our humanity, read below.

Phys.org – “Throughout her career, the famous biologist Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) argued that the world of microorganisms has a much larger impact on the entire biosphere—the world of all living things—than scientists typically recognize. Now a team of scientists from universities around the world has collected and compiled the results of hundreds of studies, most from within the past decade, on animal-bacterial interactions, and have shown that Margulis was right. The combined results suggest that the evidence supporting Margulis’ view has reached a tipping point, demanding that scientists reexamine some of the fundamental features of life through the lens of the complex, codependent relationships among bacteria and other very different life forms.”

Highlights include dengue blowing up on the global stage,  mutant superbugs and the scientists who kill them, Ebola in Bangladeshi bats, stopping Influenza dead by messing with its internal clock,  cholera in Cuba, and Syria’s apparent use of chemical weapons (more leaked diplomatic cables). Happy Friday!

WHO: Dengue has ‘Epidemic Potential”

The World Health Organization released a report assessing  and improving upon the world’s current commitments to combating the “neglected” tropical diseases. Ranking pretty high amongst the 17 tropical diseases featured is dengue, which has seen a 30-fold increase in occurrence globally over the last half century.

WHO – “In 2012, dengue ranks as the most important mosquito-borne viral disease with an epidemic potential in the world… its human and economic costs are staggering. The world needs to change its reactive approach and instead implement sustainable preventive measures that are guided by entomological and epidemiological surveillance.”

MUTANTS…or How Scientists Stalked a Lethal Superbug – With the Killers Own DNA

Is this the tagline to a summer blockbuster or a piece about using innovative epidemiology to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria?  “Why not both?  Who’s connected to Spielberg on LinkedIn? (Are you connected to Mason Biodefense on LinkedIn? You really should be)

Wired – “With each passing year, the problem of superbugs—bacteria such as Klebsiella that have evolved resistance to all, or nearly all, antibiotics available—has grown progressively more dire. Gone are the days when pharmaceutical companies could roll out generation after generation of new medications to replace those that bacteria had already surmounted. Such drugs have become much harder to find; and even when they are found, the market for them is far less lucrative than for molecules that combat such high-profile killers as cancer or AIDS. As a result, the flow through the antibiotics pipeline has slowed to a trickle. From 1983 through 1987, the FDA approved 16 new systemic antibiotics; from 2008 through 2011, it approved just two. Rather than administer some new wonder drug, then, the Clinical Center could only quarantine these KPC-positive patients and give them harsh drugs like colistin, an antibiotic so toxic it was all but abandoned in the 1970s. An estimated 90,000 people die every year from infections they acquire in US hospitals—more than the number that die from Alzheimer’s, diabetes, or influenza.”

Bats are Reservoir for Ebola Virus in Bangladesh

This is our first Ebola piece of 2013, for those of you keeping track, and it therefore an interesting one. According to a study in the CDC’s most recent Emerging Infectious Diseases, approximately four percent of a sample of 276 fruit bats in Bangladesh possessed antibodies for Ebola. Filoviruses in Asia? No thanks.

“These results suggest that Rousettus fruit bats are a reservoir for Ebola, or a new Ebola-like virus in South Asia. The study extends the range of this lethal disease further than previously suspected to now include mainland Asia. ‘Research on Filoviruses in Asia is a new frontier of critical importance to human health, and this study has been vital to better understand the wildlife reservoirs and potential transmission of Ebola virus in Bangladesh and the region,’ said Dr. Kevin Olival, lead author and Senior Research Scientist at EcoHealth Alliance.”

Scientists Try To Thwart Flu Virus By Resetting Its Clock

Having had the stupid flu, we here at the Mason Biodefense blog are well and truly read for it to disappear off the face of the planet. Scientists at Mount Sinai School of Medicine are trying to help influenza along the path to oblivion by tricking the virus to prematurely leave the cozy warmth of its host cell. Exposed, our immune system can then gobble it up like any other irrelevant antigen.

NPR – “A study in Cell Reports describes how researchers tapped into the flu’s internal clock as they search for ways to keep the virus from spreading. Flu viruses hijack the machinery inside host cells to replicate. The theft is a complicated process that takes time. A virus enters the nucleus of the cell, copies itself thousands of times and then breaks out before the immune system attacks. Every minute counts. To trick the flu, researchers fiddled with how fast the escape protein accumulates inside cells. Speed up the protein production, and the virus leaves the cell before it has made enough copies to infect someone else.”

Cholera Cases Reported in Cuba

Cholera is an awful disease, not least because it’s forever ruined the phrase “rice water” for many of us (sorry, sorry – if you don’t have a slightly macabre sense of humor coming into  Biodefense, you will going out). It’s still not known how the disease,  which before 2012 had been absent for over a century, was resurfaced in Cuba.

CNN – “A statement from the Cuban Health Ministry said so far there were 51 confirmed cases in the new outbreak. The statement did not say if anyone had died from the disease, a bacterial infection of the small intestine, which causes severe diarrhea and vomiting in infected people…The Health Ministry statement Tuesday said the latest outbreak appeared to be caused by a food vendor who had not followed proper sanitary procedures”

Leaked State Department Cable: Syria Has Used Chemical Weapons

According to Foreign Policy, a leaked State Department cable has indicated that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the rebels last month.  Out of respect for those of you working or interning with State,  no excerpts from the article will be posted.