PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Is MERS another SARS: The facts behind Middle East Respiratory Syndrome

2015-08-24
(Press-News.org) Atlanta, GA - August 24, 2015 - Experts show that while Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV), a viral respiratory illness, is infecting less people, it has a higher mortality rate and affects a specific target population when compared to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). This research is being presented at the International Conference on Emerging and Infectious Diseases in Atlanta, Georgia.

"The research conducted in this study focuses on understanding what population of individuals are most likely to become infected by MERS-CoV, compared to the population infected by SARS-CoV," said Charis Royal from Arizona State University. Understanding the population dynamics of the infected cases in both diseases can lead to understanding how the new disease will spread and if it can be compared to the SARS-CoV.

"An unusually high number of MERS-CoV cases are males with a median age of 50 years old, who have multiple chronic conditions," said Royal. " SARS-CoV, on the other hand, infects males and females nearly equally and both healthy and unhealthy individuals can be infected" she added. Both diseases spread rapidly in hospitals and hospital workers account for around 21% of infections in both SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV.

In 2003, multi-country outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) left over 8000 people infected and had a death toll of over 700. In 2012, the novel coronavirus, MERS-CoV, which is related to SARS-CoV3, was first reported in Saudi Arabia. Over the last three years, MERS-CoV has spread to 14 different countries and infected more than 1300 individuals.

Data from the research was gathered through the World Health Organization summary reports for MERS-CoV and the cumulative data reports for the 2003 SARS-CoV outbreak.

INFORMATION:

This research was presented as part of the 2015 International Conference on Emerging and Infectious Diseases held August 24 - 26 in Atlanta, Georgia.

The American Society for Microbiology is the largest single life science society, composed of over 39,000 scientists and health professionals. ASM's mission is to advance the microbiological sciences as a vehicle for understanding life processes and to apply and communicate this knowledge for the improvement of health and environmental and economic well-being worldwide.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Entomologists sniff out new stink bug to help soybean farmers control damage

Entomologists sniff out new stink bug to help soybean farmers control damage
2015-08-24
BEAUMONT -- Entomologists in Texas got a whiff of a new stink bug doing economic damage to soybeans in Texas and are developing ways to help farmers combat it, according to a report in the journal Environmental Entomology. Various types of stink bugs have long been a problem on soybean crops, but when sweeps of fields in southeast Texas netted 65 percent redbanded stink bugs, entomologists realized this particular bug had become the predominant pest problem, according to Dr. Mo Way, an entomologist at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Beaumont. The ...

Humans carry more antibiotic-resistant bacteria than animals they work with

2015-08-24
Philadelphia, PA, August 24, 2015 - Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a concern for the health and well-being of both humans and farm animals. One of the most common and costly diseases faced by the dairy industry is bovine mastitis, a potentially fatal bacterial inflammation of the mammary gland (IMI). Widespread use of antibiotics to treat the disease is often blamed for generating antibiotic-resistant bacteria. However, researchers investigating staphylococcal populations responsible for causing mastitis in dairy cows in South Africa found that humans carried more antibiotic-resistant ...

Promising class of new cancer drugs might cause memory loss in mice

Promising class of new cancer drugs might cause memory loss in mice
2015-08-24
Cancer researchers are constantly in search of more-effective and less-toxic approaches to stopping the disease, and have recently launched clinical trials testing a new class of drugs called BET inhibitors. These therapies act on a group of proteins that help regulate the expression of many genes, some of which play a role in cancer. New findings from The Rockefeller University suggest that the original version of BET inhibitors causes molecular changes in mouse neurons, and can lead to memory loss in mice that receive it. Published in Nature Neuroscience on August ...

Compound found in red wine causes conflicting changes in dogs' immune systems

Compound found in red wine causes conflicting changes in dogs immune systems
2015-08-24
Resveratrol, a compound found commonly in grape skins and red wine, has been shown to have several potentially beneficial effects on health, including cardiovascular health, stroke prevention and cancer treatments. However, scientists do not yet fully understand how the chemical works and whether or not it can be used for treatment of diseases in humans and animals. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found that resveratrol does affect the immune systems of dogs in different ways when introduced to dogs' blood. Sandra Axiak-Bechtel, an assistant professor ...

Penn/Baylor Med study describes underlying cause of diabetes in dogs

2015-08-24
In a new effort, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Baylor College of Medicine have used advanced imaging technology to fill in details about the underlying cause of canine diabetes, which until now has been little understood. For the first time, they've precisely quantified the dramatic loss of insulin-producing beta cells in dogs with the disease and compared it to the loss observed in people with type I diabetes. "The architecture of the canine pancreas has never been studied in the detail that we have done in this paper," said Rebecka Hess, professor ...

Study finds black bears in Yosemite forage primarily on plants and nuts

2015-08-24
Black bears in Yosemite National Park that don't seek out human foods subsist primarily on plants and nuts, according to a study conducted by biologists at UC San Diego who also found that ants and other sources of animal protein, such as mule deer, make up only a small fraction of the bears' annual diet. Their study, published in this week's early online edition of the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, might surprise bear ecologists and conservationists who had long assumed that black bears in the Sierra Nevada rely on lots of protein from ants and other insects ...

Similar outcomes for mothers and babies at low risk delivered by FPs and obstetricians

2015-08-24
For pregnant women who are at low risk of complications giving birth, the risk of newborn death and maternal complications is similar for obstetric deliveries by family physicians and obstetricians, according to a large study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). "It is common to assume that more specialized or higher-volume medical care will result in improved outcomes," writes Dr. Kris Aubrey-Bassler with the Primary Healthcare Research Unit, Discipline of Family Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland. "The obstetric ...

Reducing pain during vaccination: New guideline to help manage pain in children and adults

2015-08-24
A new Canadian guideline aims to ensure that pain during vaccination is minimized in both children and adults. The guideline, published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal), is targeted at all health care providers who administer vaccines. "Pain from vaccinations is common and can make people hesitate about getting future vaccines even as adults," states Dr. Anna Taddio, Senior Associate Scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Toronto, Ontario, and Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto. "This can put people at risk of contracting ...

Women in mostly male workplaces exhibit psychological stress response

2015-08-24
Today's workforce is highly sex-segregated -- for example, most elementary school teachers are women, while most chemistry professors are men. Indiana University Bloomington researchers Bianca Manago, a doctoral student in sociology, and Cate Taylor, an assistant professor of sociology and gender studies, examine one important consequence of this occupational sex segregation: the stress exposure of women working in highly male-dominated occupations. "We find that such women are more likely to experience exposure to high levels of interpersonal, workplace stressors," Manago ...

Voter ID law effects hard to pinpoint

2015-08-24
Indiana's strict voter identification law may have prevented some elderly citizens from voting in the last two presidential elections, but there's little evidence it kept large numbers of voters from the polls, according to research by Indiana University Bloomington doctoral student Adam Nicholson. Nicholson compared turnout figures in the 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections in Indiana and in Nebraska and Pennsylvania, two states without voter ID laws. Unlike most previous research on voter identification laws, the study examined data at the county level, not the state ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Modesty and boastfulness – perception depends on usual performance

Do sweeteners increase your appetite? New evidence from randomised controlled trial says no 

Women with obesity do not need to gain weight during pregnancy, new study suggests

Individuals with multiple sclerosis face substantially greater risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19, despite high rates of vaccination

Study shows obesity in childhood associated with a more than doubling of risk of developing multiple sclerosis in early adulthood

Rice Emerging Scholars Program receives $2.5M NSF grant to boost STEM education

Virtual rehabilitation provides benefits for stroke recovery

Generative AI develops potential new drugs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Biofuels could help island nations survive a global catastrophe, study suggests

NJIT research team discovering how fluids behave in nanopores with NSF grant

New study shows association of historical housing discrimination and shortfalls in colon cancer treatment

Social media use may help to empower plastic surgery patients

Q&A: How to train AI when you don't have enough data

Wayne State University researchers uncover potential treatment targets for Zika virus-related eye abnormalities

Discovering Van Gogh in the wild: scientists unveil a new gecko species

Small birds spice up the already diverse diet of spotted hyenas in Namibia

Imaging detects transient “hypoxic pockets” in the mouse brain

Dissolved organic matter could be used to track and improve the health of freshwaters

Indoor air quality standards in public buildings would boost health and economy, say international experts

Positive associations between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

New imaging method illuminates oxygen's journey in the brain

Researchers discover key gene for toxic alkaloid in barley

New approach to monitoring freshwater quality can identify sources of pollution, and predict their effects

Bidirectional link between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

Cell division quality control ‘stopwatch’ uncovered

Vaccine protects cattle from bovine tuberculosis, may eliminate disease

Andrew Siemion to receive the SETI Institute’s 2024 Drake Award

New study shows how the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus enters our cells

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy proves effective for locally advanced penile squamous cell carcinoma

Study flips treatment paradigm in bilateral Wilms tumor, shows resistance to chemotherapy may point toward favorable outcomes

[Press-News.org] Is MERS another SARS: The facts behind Middle East Respiratory Syndrome