For those of us stuck in the wintry Northeast, a Caribbean cruise seems pretty appealing. But we have to admit the idea was a whole lot more enticing before we heard about a nasty viral outbreak that struck hundreds of passengers this week.

Early Friday morning, the cruise ship Celebrity Mercury returned to Charleston, South Carolina, with a little under a fifth of its passengers sick with gastroenteritis, euphemistically known as the stomach flu. Vomiting, cramping and diarrhea. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

Read more: Stomach Flu Hits Caribbean Cruise Ship

Our life expectancy is increasing, but that doesn't mean we're necessarily taking care of ourselves. We've gotten the upper hand on some infectious diseases, but new ones keep emerging. And our healthcare costs are rising, but expense be hanged — we really

Today, on World Asthma Day, we at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), components of the National Institutes of Health, stand together with the international community to renew our dedication to understand the causes of asthma and to find better ways to treat, prevent and manage this disease.

Read more: World Asthma Day: May 5, 2009

A new study indicates there may be yet another reason to reduce childhood obesity — it may help prevent allergies. The study published in the May issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology showed that obese children and adolescents are at increased risk of having some kind of allergy, especially to a food. The study was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), both parts of the National Institutes of Health.

Read more: New Data Analysis Shows Possible Link between Childhood Obesity and Allergies

[Ed. note: Let's pray that these researchers don't use thimerasol in their vaccines or pesticides in their efforts to fight disease-spreading insects. That would kind of defeat the purpose, know what I mean?]

Gates Funds $436 Million Worth of Radical Health Projects:

SEATTLE – The Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, a major effort to achieve scientific breakthroughs against diseases that kill millions of people each year in the world’s poorest countries, today offered 43 grants totaling $436.6 million for a broad range of innovative research projects involving scientists in 33 countries. The ultimate goal of the initiative is to create “deliverable technologies” – health tools that are not only effective, but also inexpensive to produce, easy to distribute, and simple to use in developing countries.

The initiative is supported by a $450 million commitment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as two new funding commitments: $27.1 million from the Wellcome Trust, and $4.5 million from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The initiative is managed by global health experts at the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and CIHR. Additional proposed Grand Challenges projects are under review and may be awarded grants later this year.

The Grand Challenges initiative was launched by the Gates Foundation in 2003, in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, with a $200 million grant to the FNIH to help apply innovation in science and technology to the greatest health problems of the developing world. Of the billions spent each year on research into life-saving medicines, only a small fraction is focused on discovering and developing new tools to fight the diseases that cause millions of deaths each year in developing countries.

“It’s shocking how little research is directed toward the diseases of the world’s poorest countries,” said Bill Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “By harnessing the world’s capacity for scientific innovation, I believe we can transform health in the developing world and save millions of lives.”

Each of the 43 projects seeks to tackle one of 14 major scientific challenges that, if solved, could lead to important advances in preventing, treating, and curing diseases of the developing world. The 14 Grand Challenges, which were identified from among more than 1,000 suggestions from scientists and health experts around the world, address the following goals:

• Developing improved childhood vaccines that do not require refrigeration, needles, or multiple doses, in order to improve immunization rates in developing countries, where each year 27 million children do not receive basic immunizations
• Studying the immune system to guide the development of new vaccines, including vaccines to prevent malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV, which together kill more than 5 million people each year
• Developing new ways of preventing insects from transmitting diseases such as malaria, which infects 350-500 million people every year
• Growing more nutritious staple crops to combat malnutrition, which affects more than 2 billion people worldwide
• Discovering ways to prevent drug resistance because many drugs that were once successful at treating diseases like malaria are losing their effectiveness
• Discovering methods to treat latent and chronic infections such as tuberculosis, which nearly a third of the world’s population harbors in their bodies
• More accurately diagnosing and tracking disease in poor countries that do not have sophisticated laboratories or reliable medical recordkeeping systems

Read more >>

(AP) Flesh-eating bacteria cases, fatal pneumonia and life-threatening heart infections suddenly are popping up around the country, striking healthy people and stunning their doctors.

The cause? Staph, a bacteria better known for causing skin boils easily treated with standard antibiotic pills.

No more, say infectious disease experts, who increasingly are seeing these “super bugs” – strains of Staphylococcus aureus unfazed by the entire penicillin family and other first-line drugs.

Until a few years ago, these drug-resistant infections were unheard of except in hospital patients, prison inmates and the chronically ill. Now, resistant strains are infecting healthy children, athletes and others with no connection to a hospital.

“This is a new bug,” said Dr. John Bartlett, who chairs the committee on antibiotic resistance at the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “It’s a different strain than in the hospital … more dangerous than other staph.”

“Primary care physicians and ER doctors, they don’t all know (about this) and should,” he said.

Bartlett, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, treated three young Baltimore area women this year who got pneumonia from this community-acquired resistant staph. All had to be put on breathing machines, and one died, he said.
Read more >>

SUPER BUGS TIPS

Ways To Prevent The Spread Of Staph Super Bugs

Antibiotic-resistant staph infections, usually involving the skin, are showing up more often among healthy people. Here are some prevention tips:

• Wash hands thoroughly and often with soap and water.
• Keep cuts and abrasions clean and covered with a bandage until healed.
• Avoid contact with other people’s wounds or material contaminated by wounds.
• Do not share items such as razors, soap, ointments and balms, towels or wash cloths, clothing or uniforms.
• If participating in contact sports, cover cuts, scrapes and other wounds with a bandage. Shower with soap immediately after each practice or game. Wipe down all non-washable equipment (mats, head protectors, gymnastics equipment, etc.) with alcohol or antibiotic solution after each person uses it.
• If caring for someone with an infection at home, wash hands with soap after each physical contact and before going outside. Only use towels for drying hands once. Change and launder linens frequently, right away if they are soiled.
• When contact with body fluids is expected, wear disposable gloves and wash hands after removing them.
• See a physician promptly if you have a suspicious skin sore or boil.