Contagious Disease

Eastern equine encephalitis, generally referred to as its abbreviation EEE, generally has about 7 cases yearly in the United States. However, there have already been 30 cases in 2019. Humans cannot catch it from another human - humans catch the disease when a mosquito bites a horse infected with…

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) had only a few cases last week, but then had 10 confirmed cases over the weekend. The outbreak is ongoing and still declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a public health emergency of international concern. One concern is…

As of recent updates, 33 people have died and 1,479 have fallen ill from a vaping-related lung disease. The CDC is now calling it EVALI for e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury. The outbreak is getting worse as flu season is coming back into full effect. The CDC is warning…

A woman from Tskane, South Africa was stricken with a deadly strain of tuberculosis. She was very ill and only weighed 57 pounds. Local nurses convinced her to transfer to Johannesburg Hospital, which was infested with vervet monkeys. They told her she was going to die. The trial she was enrolled…

The CDC hosts a website, FluSight, where projections can be submitted real-time during the flu season; Carnegie Mellon has consistently contributed some of the most accurate forecasts and the CDC just granted them $3 million to continue and expand their research. This funding will be used to…

The vaccination for the flu is changed every year; each flu season presents a slightly different strand which requires a different vaccination. There is a current push for scientific research to create a universal flu vaccination, a single vaccination that would cover many, or most, flu strains. …

In 2018, Los Angeles saw various sexually transmitted diseases(STDs) reach their highest prevalence rates in over 30 years. Specifically, the California Department of Public Health reported a significant increase in syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. There were over 25,000, 200,000, and 79,000…

More than 1000 cases of measles have been reported as of mid-June 2019. The disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 but has resurfaced mainly in isolated groups of unvaccinated people. People who choose not to vaccinate are not only putting themselves in danger but also those who are…

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), health workers and authorities have vaccinated over 200,000 people with the developing Ebola vaccine, named V920 and produced by Merck & Co Inc. Developing the Ebola vaccine has been further motivated by the ongoing outbreak in DRC and the…

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new drug regimen used to treat an extreme form of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (TB). The clinical trials showed that nearly 90% of the patients who were infected with extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB who partook this treatment recovered…

Antiretroviral therapy(ART) has been an incredible breakthrough in the treatment of AIDS. Because of its conception in 1995, there has been an estimated 9.5 million lives saved between 1995 and 2015. However, the United Nations created a 90-90-90 goal in 2014, that they wished to achieve by 2020.…

A randomized trial comparing four different treatments for Ebola has been halted due to the effectiveness of the two drugs, REGN-EB3 and mAb114. These results indicate that scientists are a few steps closer to finding a cure for Ebola, a virus that has killed more than 1,800 people in the DRC since…

A tropical parasite called Angiostrongylus cantonensis is being transmitted from the feces of rats and snails to humans in Hawaii.It’s larvae can travel to the brain causing a condition known as eosinophilic meningitis.Rat lungworm disease is difficult to test and no cure,other than simply waiting…