Assiri and colleagues from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) today described, in The Lancet, the clinical characteristics of 47 cases of MERS-CoV. The largest detailed analysis of MERS-CoV cases to date.This report includes 20 cases more than that 27 reported previously by these authors, along with additional information on the first 27. The paper opened by noting that...
Belated Happy Birthday to Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)
The 25th would have been Dr Franklin's 93rd birthday.In 1952 while working at King's College in London, Dr Franklin captured images (including Photo 51) of the patterns made by DNA scattering X-Rays...which revealed a helical structure. The photo was the basis for James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins chemical model of DNA as double helix structure.We...
MERS-CoV: new case and a death in previous case both from Asir Province
Hat tip to crofsblogs and FluTrackersThe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) Ministry of Health (MOH) website announces a new case (83, no other details) and the death (no details at all; FluTrackers believe it could be case 66M1, announced 26.07.13) in a previously...
Allergy to a Transformer's garbled signals
Transforming growth factor-� (TGF�) is a protein we secrete throughout most of our body which controls the growth, function and future employment of cells through binding to its receptor on them and creating a specific response inside the cell. It's also one of many very important managerial proteins called cytokines. It is involved in immunity (calms it down, stops it...
Drug resistant bacterial terrorists worthy of alarm
Hat tip to Namraj for the education.Maryn McKenna describes the rising alarm over our inability to stop infections by bacteria, because we have essentially run out of drugs to which they are sensitive. This is despite Doctors keeping in reserve the important drugs like carbapenems. But carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CREs) continue to spread, and kill.Okay,...
You think you're under pressure?
The human herpesviruses (HHVs) have their DNA genomes poised to be fired into the cell with which they are docked, under pressures equivalent to 10s of atmospheres. These are the recent findings of Bauer and colleagues. Those protein capsids must be pretty tough.So at least the early stage of DNA entry is a passive process; just relies on good old force.This...
Editor's Note #9: End of a (very short) era - beginning of a much longer new one!
...and the beginning of a new one! For the first time in 6021-days (or 16-years, 5-months and 26-days since 28-Jan 1997 in fact), part of Virology Down Under (VDU) has moved off the University of Queensland's servers. *sniff*But its only this relatively new format, the blog bit, not the rest of the site. For some reason, actual blog professionals want to be able...
Open a box of mystery.
Follow my blog with Bloglovin The newest jaw dropping viral discovery is a big one - literally. Philippe and colleagues describe 2 protozoan-infecting megaviruses (possibly part of a proposed group, the family Megaviridae, in the future?).These guys are not tiny, simple or only subtly different. One virus, Pandoravirus salinus (from marine sediment at the mouth of Tunquen river, central...
Ferrets are not small furry humans.
Zeng Guang, Chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), commented on the recent H7N9 study from his own country (covered here)...The findings are mainly based on animal tests in the lab that have not been witnessed or substantiated among the H7N9 human cases reported. So it shouldn't affect current intervention efforts or strategy at allSo far, no substantial...
New Influenza A(H7N9) case in Hebei, 1st for this province.
Hat tips to Crawford Kilian, FluTrackers and Mike Coston for extensive coverage.In what is one of the most thoroughly reported single cases since we heard of H7N9, the weekend saw the confirmation of an H7N9 infection in a 61-year old female from Hebei province. I don't mean that flippantly, such a...
Thoughts and (many) questions on the 4 MERS-CoV UAE cases. [AMENDED]
Thanks to Prof Andrew Rambaut for pointing out my incorrect usage of R04 new infections were detected from health-care workers (HCWs) in contact with a previously confirmed 82-year old male MERS patient-we've covered this previously.My main question is: Does that mean the basic reproduction number (R0) for MERS-CoV is creeping towards being greater than 1? If in fact 4 new infections...
