Tag Archives: pandemic

Preventing the next pandemic

January 6, 2012 | Julie Ciaramella | Leave a comment

Jonna Mazet, a veterinarian, epidemiologist, and professor in the Department of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of California-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, is the director of PREDICT, an early warning pandemic system. She’s trying to prevent the next outbreak of HIV and other pandemics.

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Genetically engineered, highly contagious strain of H5N1 causes controversy

December 19, 2011 | Julie Ciaramella | Leave a comment

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, working independently, have found a way to genetically engineer H5N1, the avian bird flu, to make it highly contagious to humans. Ron Fouchier, the Dutch scientist, created the virus in a lab and then infected ferrets, which transmit diseases to each other similar to the way humans do. (A ferret infected with the virus could cause another ferret housed in the same cage to get sick simply by being nearby.)

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Next big pandemic likely to originate in animals

December 15, 2011 | Julie Ciaramella | Leave a comment

From the Huffington Post today comes an article that says Americans are afraid of global pandemics, but lack the knowledge of where pandemics come from. Fewer than one in five Americans are aware that the next big pandemic is likely to originate in animals, the article says. Read more »

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New study in mice provides hope for HIV vaccine

November 30, 2011 | Julie Ciaramella | Leave a comment

Scientists have been trying for years to create a vaccine against HIV, and a group of researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) may have hit upon a huge discovery. Their study, reported Nov. 30 in the journal Nature, shows that mice were resistant to HIV after they were injected with the DNA for an HIV-neutralizing antibody. Mice aren’t capable of being infected with HIV, so they were genetically altered to carry human immune system cells.

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One Health Headlines: Friday, October 21, 2011

October 21, 2011 | Michael San Filippo | Leave a comment

I spend so much time scanning the news and searching for One Health stories that it’s always a nice surprise when those stories come to me. That was the case earlier this week, when, upon turning on the radio, I heard microbiologist Nathan Wolfe being interviewed and discussing his work studying how viruses emerge from animals into human populations around the world.

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