The discovery of a cause, as well as treatment, for Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) may involve our commensal gut bacteria.

Millions of adults suffering from RA experience chronic pain, chronic inflammation, and often severe functional disability of the joints. Onset in older populations is a well-known risk factor, and RA...

Hans Christian Gram, credited as the inventor of the Gram staining technique, was a pioneering biologist who devised the system of classification which led to as many as 30,000 formally named species of bacteria being investigated. Gram, working with German pathologist and microbiologist Karl Friedländer, devised the technique in Berlin in the early 1880s.

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Is a New and Better Vaccine Coming Soon?

A new player in the field of COVID vaccines could be arriving soon. The trials so far are encouraging for both safety and efficacy. It even has some advantages over the Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines that have become so familiar to us.

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Want to lower your risk of contracting a MAP-related malady? Here's how.

Emerging research is implicating Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis (MAP) as the etiological cause of various diseases including inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's disease, Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, m...

Is there a correlation between the end of mask mandates and the rise in cases of the common cold and influenza?

The start of the summer is aligning with another new beginning, one in which many around the world make a return to the “New Normal” and relearn what life was like before COVID-19. While some take baby ste...

Antidepressants may be our best bet in treating Ebola

The 2013 to 2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa made global headlines and inflamed discussion as the largest single outbreak of this deadly virus. The lack of a vaccine approved for use in humans and the rapid rate of mutation in the Ebolavirus genus create...

Can H. pylori colonization offer some protection against disease?

Helicobacter pylori is an organism typically known as the culprit of painful stomach ulcers and severe abdominal pain, although there is now growing evidence which suggesting...

Some patients have become infected with TB from contaminated graft material. How are they screened for infectious disease?

In June of this year, it was discovered over 100 patients may have been exposed to tuberculosis originating from cadaver-derived material used in their bone graft procedures.

Second only...

Medieval doctors didn’t always prescribe what was best for an ailing patient (leeches were a popular therapy). However, a medical manuscript from the 10th Century called Bald’s Leechbook recently found in the British Library details a concoction of wine, oxbile, and two species of Allium (garlic, onion, or leek) used to treat styes, now known as an infection caused by Staphylococcus aur...

Although of great concern, vaccination will help

When will the pandemic end? How many more COVID-19 waves will the U.S. go through? Will we go back to “normal” in the fall? All these questions depend largely on one factor: the epidemiology of the variants.

As the virus spreads around the world, variant strains hav...

How far do we have to go to reach herd immunity?

First of all we must know that herd immunity is defined as a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that can occur with some diseases when a sufficient...

Nanotechnology refers to the manipulation of molecules for large-scale manufacturing purposes. It is a broad field of science, which combines chemistry, physics, energy storage, microfabrication, and molecular engineering.

Recently, it has been popularized by its role in nanomedicine for the COVID-19 vaccine. (1) Currently...

Could this explain why some are more susceptible to COVID-19?

The SARS-CoV-2 virus gains entry to the epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract by way of the ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) receptor. This is the protein to which the viral spike proteins attach in order to gain entry into the cell.

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Information on messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines is frequently in the news due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, since mRNA technology is used in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. Long before the start of the pandemic, however, researchers have been trying to use this technology to treat cancer.

Colorectal cancer is...