Outbreak Prevention & Control Gateway

Rethinking weight-loss strategies

Many weight-loss interventions based on a simple model of energy balance fail to achieve long-term results; Stephen R Zubrick and colleagues recommend that multiple factors affecting energy regulation should be considered in order to tackle obesity.

Improving arthroplasty outcomes

Fares Haddad and colleagues review peri-operative interventions for improved patient outcomes after total knee and hip replacements, which aim to improve patient quality of life and lessen the economic burden by reducing length of hospital stay.

The spread of influenza in schools

A low-cost ranking method for modeling the spread of influenza in schools identifies subpopulations at higher risk of early infection than randomly selected communities, which could be effective for predicting and preventing epidemics.

Modeling infection transmission

Gerardo Chowell and Cécile Viboud comment on a novel method that identifies risk of influenza transmission and allows early detection of infection in schools, but caution that this promising method needs testing on outbreaks in different settings.

Glycoproteins as tumor markers

As there has been limited success in the development of glycoprotein tumor markers, Eleftherios Diamandis and colleagues review the challenges, and discuss how new technology will facilitate quantification of these biomarkers for clinical use.

Stabilizing synthetic mRNA expression

The small molecule BAY-11 suppresses the innate immune response and enhances the expression of synthetic OCT4 mRNA after transfection into adult human skin cells, with multiple potential research and therapeutic applications.

Swine virus protects from human influenza

A swine influenza virus that grows to high titres and exhibits cross-reactivity was identified and used as an inactivated vaccine to protect mice from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic strain.

Minimizing particle-induced organ dysfunction

In-line filtration for complete infusion therapy in critically ill children decreases the incidence rates of respiratory, renal, and hematologic dysfunction, suggesting that filtration may prevent organ damage caused by infused particles.

Typing tuberculosis

Both restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and 24 loci variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Beijing genotypes show high discrimination, indicating that the faster VNTR method is suitable for investigation of transmission of these strains.

Viremia absent in children with rotavirus

Rotavirus (RVA) viremia was not found in children with rotavirus diarrhea, and could not be identified via the presence of antigenemia in the patients’ serum.

HIV/AIDS

How has the era of genomics advanced our understanding of HIV/AIDS epidemiology and pathogenesis?

HPV vaccination economics in LMICs

An expert group from the World Health Organization provides advice on economic issues associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), recommending that analyses are thorough, but not overly complex.

Hepatitis C: lessons from a meta-analysis

Kazuaki Chayama and Nelson Hayes discuss a recent study in BMC Medicine assessing the extent of effects of IL28B polymorphisms in spontaneous and therapy-induced hepatitis C virus clearance.

Antivirals against Enterovirus 71

A timely review of small molecules that may be effective against the emerging pathogen, Enterovirus 71, cause of hand, foot and mouth disease, including known drug resistance and animal models for evaluating efficacy

Bacterial meningitis diagnostics

Real-time PCR and Gram stain display relative accuracy in diagnosing meningitis when compared with cerebrospinal fluid culture and are less affected by antibiotic presence suggesting that these methods may be useful when antibiotics have been previously administered.