For the last five decades, cholera has been a consistent health risk in various parts of the world. Recent outbreaks in Haiti and Yemen have proven difficult to stop, but cholera risks started long before.
It hasn’t always been that way.
Research published in the National Academy of Sciences reveals the source of that ongoing cholera problem. An evolved bacterial signaling network has been the source of global cholera deaths for over 50 years.
In the past, animals have been carriers of various new flu strains.
Birds and pigs both developed the virus in the past, eventually passing them on to humans. Once we were infected, the terms bird flu and swine flu filled news coverage. Around the world, people worried about the deadly risks brought on by these outbreaks.
A new study concluded that dogs may be the source of the next flu epidemic. Conducted by the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the study showed that canine have the potential to host a new, dangerous strain.
Though the disease originates in Africa, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have put together a tuberculosis timeline which shows that it was largely spread by the Roman Empire.
TB is one of the world’s most prevalent and deadly diseases. According to the CDC, it affects one in four people around the globe and is the leading killer of those who are infected with HIV. In 2016, a staggering 10.4 million people were infected with the illness and 1.7 million tuberculosis-related deaths occurred.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) is the strain that many recent historical-research TB investigations focused on. According to bioRxiv, the same strain was also the subject of the 2018 study.
Another reason to travel, but you may actually learn something on this trip. DNA tourism is a growing trend for travelers that want to discover their own heritage.
Families are much more likely to be spread across the globe. Maybe you’ve relocated to another state or country for work and are situated in a foreign land. There are many other reasons why people don’t know much about their heritage; perhaps your parents don’t know much about their family history and can’t offer a tree to help.
But, websites like Ancestry.com and the fast-growing 23andMe offer a scientific solution.
By breaking down malaria, we may have another breakthrough in disease prevention.
Researchers have discovered how Plasmodium vivax (P. vivax) malaria parasites enter human red blood cells at the atomic level. The finding could allow scientists to create antibodies to stop various strains of the virus from infecting people.
The discovery was made possible with a Nobel Prize-winning technology called “cryo-EM”, or cryo-electron microscopy. Using a 3-D map, a team was able to visualize exactly what happens when P. vivax interacts with human red blood cells. The groundbreaking team hailed from the University of Melbourne and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia and from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the United States.
