Flu Shots May Cut Risk of Blood Clots Forming in Veins

piggy submitted, created time 2 weeks 6 days (www.sciencedaily.com)

Flu shots may reduce the risk of blood clots forming in veins by 26 percent, according to research presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2008.

“Our study suggests for the first time that vaccination against influenza may reduce the risk of venous thrombotic embolism (VTE),” said Joseph Emmerich, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study and professor of vascular medicine at the University Paris Descartes and head of the INSERM Lab 765, which investigates thrombosis. “This protective effect was more pronounced before the age of fifty-two years

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Maternal flu shots protect newborns: U.S. study

jerry submitted, created time 2 months 1 week (www.reuters.com)

Flu shots given to pregnant women a month or more before delivery will prevent most cases of influenza during the first six months of their babies' lives, researchers said.

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Virus Gets a Taste of Its Own Medicine

jerry submitted, created time 3 months 3 weeks (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

Little more than protein capsules chock-full of genetic material, viruses barely rank among the living. Yet like people, at least one virus can catch a virus--the viral equivalent of coming down with the flu. This "flu" virus impairs the host virus's ability to grow and reproduce, a research team studying the largest known viruses reports.

Viruses are tiny biological hijackers that cause diseases that include the common cold, the flu, chickenpox, and AIDS. They infect animals, plants, and microorganisms and use their host's cellular machinery to make copies of themselves

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Flu hotspot found in Asia

jane2007 submitted, created time 7 months 2 weeks (www.nature.com)

Each year, officials struggle to predict which strains of flu will spread globally, killing up to 500,000. This year, the breeding ground for new influenza strains is centered in East and Southeast Asia.

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Whatever Happened to... Avian Flu?

As Viruses Mutate, Flu Vaccine Becomes Inefficient

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter

jane2007 submitted, created time 11 months 3 weeks (www.nytimes.com)

Researchers in New York believe they have solved one of the great mysteries of the flu: Why does the infection spread primarily in the winter months?The answer, they say, has to do with the virus itself. It is more stable and stays in the air longer when air is cold and dry, the exact conditions for much of the flu season.

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Early Action Key To Reducing Flu Death Toll

collapsar submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (www.sciencedaily.com)

Nearly 40 years ago, MIT Professor Richard Larson spent a week sick in bed with the worst illness he'd ever had-the particularly virulent strain of flu that swept the globe in 1968. "That was the sickest I'd ever been," Larson recalled. "I really thought that was the end." It took him two or three months to recover fully from the illness.

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Bypassing eggs, flu vaccine grown in insect cells shows promise

alpha submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.biologynews.net)

"An experimental flu vaccine made in insect cells – not in eggs, where flu vaccines currently available in the United States are grown – is safe and as effective as conventional vaccines in protecting people against the flu, according to results published in the April 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association."

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Caterpillar Cells Could Prove Key to Mass-Producing Flu Vaccine

badboy submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.sciam.com)

"Baculovirus is the plague of the fall armyworm, which is itself a major pest for corn farmers. The virus infects the caterpillar's cells and hijacks them to produce the proteins it needs to thrive and spread. Scientists have appropriated this cellular machinery to produce other proteins, including hemagglutinin, the key used by the influenza virus to infiltrate human cells and make us sick."

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