The microbiome is made up of dynamic communities of trillion microbes, and consists of eukaryotes, archaea (primitive single-celled organisms), bacteria and viruses that reside on and in our bodies. These microbes complement each other and the human host, and play important roles in a variety of biological processes. Indeed, 0ur microbial partners carry out a […]
Candida yeasts — the most common of which is Candida albicans — normally live in and on the body, without causing any symptoms. However, Candida can overgrow, and cause “thrush” and “yeast infections”. In addition, it can enter the bloodstream and cause candidemia — althougha extremely rare in people without risk factors, candidemia is the fourth […]
Visceral leishmaniasis, known in India as kala-azar or black fever, is a parasitic disease that kills an estimated 500,000 people a year, 90 percent of them in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Brazil and Sudan. In India, the disease is endemic in the northeastern Indian State of Bihar – the epicenter of kala-azar in the region – and in Jharkhand, Uttar […]
Injuries and infections are facts of life, and we need to deal with them. Thus, it’s not surprising we have developed efficient and magnificent sets of mechanisms that defend us from whatever is perceived as a danger, for example micro-organisms and irritant substances. Inflammation (or inflammatory response) is one of these sets of mechanisms, and not only […]
Thanks to their keen sense of smell, African giant pouched rats can be trained to detect landmines and tuberculosis. Two weeks ago, Maarten Boersema reported in The Scientist that “It takes about nine months to fully train a tuberculosis-detection rat. But once trained, the rat can screen thousands of patients every month.” Rats are not the only disease-sniffing […]
Our understanding of the risk factors for heart disease, the related prevention programs, diagnosis and treatment are continuously improving. At the same time, there are many unknowns that need to be studied. After all, heart disease kills more people than any other disease in the U.S. and worldwide. One of the questions in search of […]