Topic description and stories

Combating infectious diseases and the threat of antimicrobial resistance remains one of the greatest global challenges.

Blood transfusion bags

Reducing number of infectious malaria parasites in donated blood could help prevent transmission during transfusion

21 Apr 2016

A technique for reducing the number of infectious malaria parasites in whole blood could significantly reduce the number of cases of transmission of...

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Neanderthal man

Neanderthals may have been infected by diseases carried out of Africa by humans, say researchers

11 Apr 2016

Review of latest genetic evidence suggests infectious diseases are tens of thousands of years older than previously thought, and that they could jump...

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Uninfected or asymptomatic? Diagnostic tests key to forecasting major epidemics

05 Apr 2016

Major epidemics such as the recent Ebola outbreak or the emerging Zika epidemic may be difficult to forecast because of our inability to determine...

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‘Clogged-up’ immune cells help explain smoking risk for TB

24 Mar 2016

Smoking increases an individual’s risk of developing tuberculosis (TB) – and makes the infection worse – because it causes vital immune cells to...

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Ebola legacy lab will improve Sierra Leone’s resilience to future epidemics

22 Jan 2016

Samples from the recently confirmed case of Ebola in Sierra Leone have been analysed at a new infectious diseases laboratory in the country, set up...

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Left: Roman latrines from Lepcis Magna in Libya. Right: Roman whipworm egg from Turkey

Roman toilets gave no clear health benefit, and Romanisation actually spread parasites

08 Jan 2016

Archaeological evidence shows that intestinal parasites such as whipworm became increasingly common across Europe during the Roman Period, despite...

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Roman toilets

Opinion: Why the Romans weren’t quite as clean as you might have thought

06 Jan 2016

Piers Mitchell (Department of Biological Anthroplogy) discusses what Roman toilets did for the health of the population.

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Left: Skull of a Yamnaya, the people who migrated to Central Asia in early Bronze Age and developed the Afanasievo culture. The Afanasievo are one of the Bronze Age groups carrying Y. pestis. Right: Scanning Electron Micrograph Of A Flea

Plague in humans ‘twice as old’ but didn’t begin as flea-borne, ancient DNA reveals

22 Oct 2015

New research dates plague back to the early Bronze Age, showing it had been endemic in humans across Eurasia for millennia prior to the first...

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Aedes Albopictus mosquito (cropped, lightened)

Global consortium rewrites the ‘cartography’ of dengue virus

17 Sep 2015

An international consortium of laboratories worldwide that are studying the differences among dengue viruses has shown that while the long-held view...

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Resting soldiers

Too exhausted to fight – and to do harm

29 Jun 2015

An ‘exhausted’ army of immune cells may not be able to fight off infection, but if its soldiers fight too hard they risk damaging the very body they...

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Sausages (cropped)

MRSA contamination found in supermarket sausages and minced pork

18 Jun 2015

A survey carried out earlier this year has found the first evidence of the ‘superbug’ bacteria Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) in...

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influenza

Virus evolution and human behaviour shape global patterns of flu movement

08 Jun 2015

The global movement patterns of all four seasonal influenza viruses are illustrated in research published today in the journal Nature , providing a...

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