Richard Knox

Prevention Pill Cuts HIV Risk For Injecting Drug Users

Richard Knox — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:53:00 +0000

A once-a-day pill has been proven to lower the risk of getting HIV among needle-using drug addicts, just as it does among heterosexual couples and men who have sex with men.

Among 2,400 injecting drug users in Bangkok, those assigned to take a daily dose of an antiviral drug Viread, or tenofovir generically, had half the risk of getting HIV over a four-year period as those who took a placebo pill.

Triple Threat: Middle East Respiratory Virus And 2 Bird Flus

Richard Knox — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:31:00 +0000

The World Health Organization is warning health care workers everywhere to suspect a disease called Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, whenever they see a case of unexplained pneumonia.

Monday's warning comes at the end of a six-day WHO investigation in Saudi Arabia, where 40 of the 55 cases of the respiratory disease have occurred.

NIH Chief Rejects Ethics Critique Of Preemie Study

Richard Knox — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 12:59:00 +0000

The chief of the National Institutes of Health is disavowing a ruling from the government office that oversees the ethics of human research.

At issue is a controversial study of more than 1,300 severely premature infants.

Obama Administration Seeks To Loosen Antibiotic Approvals

Richard Knox — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 06:19:00 +0000

Every day in hospitals all over America, thousands of patients die of infections that used to be curable. But the antibiotics used to treat them aren't working anymore.

It's called drug resistance, and it's largely a consequence of antibiotics overuse.

A Boston Family's Struggle With TB Reveals A Stubborn Foe

Richard Knox — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 07:34:00 +0000

Thanks to gold-standard tuberculosis treatment and prevention programs, cases of TB in the United States have declined every year for the past two decades — to the lowest level ever.

But TB's course through the Williams family in Boston shows that no nation can afford to relax its efforts to find, treat and prevent TB.