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

Varied immunity by age 5 in children vaccinated with serogroup B meningococcus as babies

2015-03-23
(Press-News.org) Young children who received the 4CMenB vaccine as infants to protect against serogroup B meningococcal disease had waning immunity by age 5, even after receiving a booster at age 3 ½, according to new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal)

Serogroup B meningococcal disease is the leading cause of meningitis and blood infections in developed countries. Infants and young children under the age of 5 years are especially at risk, and there is a second peak of cases in the late teenage years.

The multicomponent serogroup B meningococcal (4CMenB) vaccine aims to prevent most cases of serogroup B meningococcal disease and is licensed for use in the European Union, Australia and Canada. In 2014, it was recommended for inclusion in the UK's routine childhood vaccination schedule, and a vaccine campaign using 4CMenB targeting all those under 20 years of age was recently run in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec. However, the Public Health Agency of Canada currently recommends vaccination only for those in defined high-risk groups.

The study, by researchers from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and Novartis, the vaccine manufacturer, looked at antibody levels against 8 strains of serogroup B meningococcus in 5 year-old children who had been vaccinated with the 4CMenB vaccine in early childhood and received their last dose 20 months previously. They found that of children who received the vaccine at age 2, 4, 6, 12 and 40 months, 44%-88% still had protective antibody titres against strains that were directly matched to the vaccine. For children vaccinated later (at ages 40 and 42 months), the percentage with protective antibody titres 20 months after their last dose ranged from 31% to 100%. The study also looked at the side effect profile of giving the vaccine at 5 years of age and found that though pain at the site of the vaccination was common, rates of fever were lower than those in younger children.

"These results...provide important new information about how the persistence, at 5 years of age, of bactericidal activity induced by administration of 4CMenB vaccine differs between test strains and with different vaccination schedules," write the authors.

"Introduction of the 4CMenB vaccine into the UK's routine immunization schedule provides an ideal opportunity to assess the effect of this vaccine in a real-world setting and will guide the implementation of 4CMenB vaccination in Canada and worldwide."

INFORMATION:



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Landmark study proves that magnets can control heat and sound

2015-03-23
COLUMBUS, Ohio--Researchers at The Ohio State University have discovered how to control heat with a magnetic field. In the March 23 issue of the journal Nature Materials, they describe how a magnetic field roughly the size of a medical MRI reduced the amount of heat flowing through a semiconductor by 12 percent. The study is the first ever to prove that acoustic phonons--the elemental particles that transmit both heat and sound--have magnetic properties. "This adds a new dimension to our understanding of acoustic waves," said Joseph Heremans, Ohio Eminent Scholar ...

Colliding stars explain enigmatic 17th century explosion

Colliding stars explain enigmatic 17th century explosion
2015-03-23
New observations made with APEX and other telescopes reveal that the star that European astronomers saw appear in the sky in 1670 was not a nova, but a much rarer, violent breed of stellar collision. It was spectacular enough to be easily seen with the naked eye during its first outburst, but the traces it left were so faint that very careful analysis using submillimetre telescopes was needed before the mystery could finally be unravelled more than 340 years later. The results appear online in the journal Nature on 23 March 2015. Some of seventeenth century's greatest ...

Combination therapy boosts antiviral response to chronic infection

2015-03-23
New Haven, Conn. -- A Yale-led team has identified a promising new combination immunotherapy to enhance the body's ability to fight chronic viral infections and possibly cancer. Their study was published March 23 in Nature Medicine. Viruses that cause chronic infection, such as HIV and Hepatitis B and C, are able to persist in the body despite attack from T cells, the body's main line of defense against pathogens. They persist because, over time, our T cells weaken to the point of "T-cell exhaustion." To circumvent this process, the research team -- led by Susan Kaech, ...

Policy makers should not discount the damages from future climate tipping points

2015-03-23
Society should set a high carbon tax now to try and prevent climate change reaching a point of no return according to a new study. The research, carried out by the Universities of Exeter, Zurich, Stanford and Chicago and published today in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that the prospect of an uncertain future tipping point should greatly increase the amount we are willing to pay now to limit climate change. Depending on the economic impacts of an abrupt change in climate and how quickly this is felt, the cost of carbon emitted now increases by 50 - 200%. Setting ...

Atlantic Ocean overturning found to slow down already today

Atlantic Ocean overturning found to slow down already today
2015-03-23
The gradual but accelerating melting of the Greenland ice-sheet, caused by man-made global warming, is a possible major contributor to the slowdown. Further weakening could impact marine ecosystems and sea level as well as weather systems in the US and Europe. "It is conspicuous that one specific area in the North Atlantic has been cooling in the past hundred years while the rest of the world heats up," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, lead author of the study to be published in Nature Climate Change. Previous research had already ...

Scientists use DNA sequencing to trace the spread of drug-resistant TB

2015-03-23
Scientists have for the first time used DNA sequencing to trace the fatal spread of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis between patients in the UK. Genetic analysis of the TB bacteria revealed how a 44-year-old man who died of the disease in 2012 caught the drug-resistant infection from a healthcare worker who had worked in South Africa, when both were admitted on the same medical ward four years earlier. TB is spread by inhaling tiny airborne droplets from an infected person. The bacteria can survive in the lungs for long periods without causing symptoms - known as latent ...

Shape-shifting frog discovered in Ecuadorian Andes

Shape-shifting frog discovered in Ecuadorian Andes
2015-03-23
A frog in Ecuador's western Andean cloud forest changes skin texture in minutes, appearing to mimic the texture it sits on. Originally discovered by a Case Western Reserve University PhD student and her husband, a projects manager at Cleveland Metroparks' Natural Resources Division, the amphibian is believed to be the first known to have this shape-shifting capability. But the new species, called Pristimantis mutabilis, or mutable rainfrog, has company. Colleagues working with the couple recently found that a known relative of the frog shares the same texture-changing ...

Aggression and violence against doctors: Almost everyone is affected

2015-03-23
Verbal abuse, aggressive behaviour, criminal damage to objects--such incidents are to be expected within certain professions. Hardly anyone had included doctors in this thinking, however, although they too are exposed to such problems. Florian Vorderwülbecke and colleagues in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2015; 112: 159-65) investigate, for the first time, how often acts of violence and aggression against primary care physicians are committed in Germany. They surveyed 1500 doctors, asking which assaults they had been ...

Water content thresholds recommended for Gardenia jasminoides

Water content thresholds recommended for Gardenia jasminoides
2015-03-23
ATHENS, GA -- More efficient irrigation management has become a primary focus in sustainable container plant production as growers look for ways to improve resource use and mitigate negative environmental impacts of fertilizers and pesticides that are often found in nursery runoff. Among the new technologies for increasing irrigation efficiency is the use of soil moisture sensors for automated irrigation. The practice allows nursery personnel to schedule plant irrigation when substrate volumetric water content drops below a certain threshold, thus improving irrigation efficiency ...

Chef-enhanced school meals increase healthy food consumption

2015-03-23
Boston, MA - Schools collaborating with a professionally trained chef to improve the taste of healthy meals significantly increased students' fruit and vegetable consumption, according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study also found that using "choice architecture" (environmental nudges to promote healthy choices) in school cafeterias improved students' selection of fruits and vegetables, but did not increase consumption over the long-term. The study is the first to examine the long-term impact of choice architecture ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Older teens who start vaping post-high school risk rapid progress to frequent use

Corpse flowers are threatened by spotty recordkeeping

Riding the AI wave toward rapid, precise ocean simulations

Are lifetimes of big appliances really shrinking?

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

[Press-News.org] Varied immunity by age 5 in children vaccinated with serogroup B meningococcus as babies