ONCOBITES - Taylor Poston (IDM) researches the link between childhood acute leukemia and cleanliness. Childhood acute leukemia is the most common pediatric cancer in the developed world. It accounts for one-third of all cases and affects 1 in 2000 children under the age of 15. More specifically, acute lymphoblastic leukemia is the most common pediatric leukemia and case numbers have been increasing steadily at 1% each year.
UPMC HEALTH NEWS – In the late 1990s, new and highly potent anti-HIV drugs emerged— including protease and reverse transcriptase inhibitors—which could for the first time control HIV infection. For this 1998 World AIDS Day, Pitt IDM AIDS researcher Charles Rinaldo and the late Bridget Murtagh of the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force address transmission, drug resistance, and the radically prescient question of whether HIV could be cured.
IDM's DERRICK MATTHEWS explains Pitt Public Health's work on HIV/AIDS and where we are today. "If you're a black gay man in the U.S., you have a one in two change in your lifetime of becoming HIV positive…short of the cure that we’re looking for, the biology is way ahead of the social implementation science."
IDM's DERRICK MATTHEWS demystifies infectious diseases and microbiology with a basic overview of the fields, how they are practiced, and how disease is spread.
JOURNAL OF VIROLOGICAL METHODS - BURKE, MARQUES, and colleagues discuss anti-dengue NS1-specific IgG and IgG3 as potential biomarkers of long-term and recent (less than 6 months) DENV infections, respectively.
THE LANCET - MARQUES and BURKE comment about two Zika vaccines in clinical development and describe the challenges ahead.
PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE - Magalhaes, Braga, Cordeiro, Oliveira, Castanha, Maciel, Amancio, Gouveia, Peixoto-deSilva Jr., Peixoto, Britto, Lima, Lima, and Marques detected the tail end of a Zika epidemic in 2015-16 which was displaced by a chikungunya epidemic. Few dengue cases were identified despite a high number of official dengue notifications in the area during this period. Here they show the important epidemiological features of these cas...
ANTIVIRAL RESEARCH - McMillen and Hartman discuss the historical role of Rift Valley Fever (RVF) as a biological weapon and conclude with an outline of the important unanswered questions for ongoing research into this important zoonotic disease.
JANE CAULEY, who has served as the associate dean for research, will be stepping down from that position to take on additional responsibilities as the executive vice chair of EPI. Cauley is also a distinguished professor of epidemiology. VELPANDI AYYAVOO, currently associate dean for faculty affairs and IDM professor, will become the associate dean for research and faculty affairs. Congratulations!
The 2018 Pittsburgh Summer Institute (PSI), a collaborative internship program between the Allegheny County Health Department and Pitt Public Health, welcomed 16 students at orientation yesterday. The students will be addressing real-world public health problems and completing a group project about the tobacco retail environment.