Infection

On June 19, an 18-year-old teen from Ohio died after contracting an infection caused by a rare brain-eating amoeba.
Local, state, and national officials are investigating the death, which occurred after the young woman, Lauren Seitz, visited the U.S. National Whitewater Center (USNWC) in Charlotte, North Carolina. Though Seitz lives in Ohio, she was visiting some southern states on a youth mission music tour with her church, Church of the Messiah United Methodist Church. The church is located in Westerville, Ohio.

Have you ever experienced a long-lasting cough, unable to find a solution after going through a string of pharmaceutical medications? Fortunately, one study looking at natural alternatives to medications found what could sometimes be a superior alternative – a combination of honey and coffee – for the treatment of persistent post-infectious cough (PPC).

For the past several months, I’ve been writing about a superbug that is resistant to all antibiotics, including “last resort” drugs. Experts first found it in China, and believed it would take about a decade to cross over into Europe. However, they were wrong; it only took a few months. It also arrived in Canada, and now it’s here, too.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said this week that the Zika virus is “scarier than we initially thought.” The agency made a connection between Zika and microcephaly, a horrible birth defect that causes babies to be born with small heads and brains, in pregnant women. It also suspected that Zika causes Guillain-Barré, a nervous system disorder that can temporarily paralyze people and cause permanent brain damage.

Going to the bathroom has deep meaning in the Netherlands – now that its first “poop bank” has opened.
The Dutch Donor Feces Bank (NDFB) is open for business at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), bringing new reason and meaning to relieving oneself. The bank was set up in an effort to reduce the prevalence of infection by Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, bacteria in the human digestive tract.

For many years, the only known link between Candida spp. infections, and cancer was that it is an opportunistic pathogen taking advantage of the immune system damage caused by chemo. Recently, new research has found that Candida albicans can actually also promote cancer by producing carcinogens, causing inflammation, increasing the response of Th17 cells, and molecular mimicry of our own immune cells.

Alabama health officials are offering some residents $160 to be screened and treated for tuberculosis after an outbreak of the disease killed 3 people and sickened 26.
The Alabama Department of Public Health said it will dispatch extra nurses and TB investigators to Marion, a town 80 miles west of the capital of Montgomery, where the outbreak has been centralized.
In fact, the infection rate in Marion is higher than those in many third-world countries. [1]

A rare disease known as rabbit fever (also called tularemia) that was thought to have been largely conquered decades ago has made a resurgence in the U.S.

A rare disease known as rabbit fever (also called tularemia) that was thought to have been largely conquered decades ago has made a resurgence in the U.S.

Antibiotics have always been a double-edged sword. Yes, they kill what would otherwise be a harmful and sometimes deadly bacteria, but they also kill off the good bacteria in the gut, which allows harmful gut bacteria to proliferate. Now, scientists say they’ve found a way to disarm those dangerous gut bacteria without killing the helpful kind in the process, at least when targeting one type of bacteria.