Brucellosis

A pack of Plaquenil, (Hydrochloroquine) is displayed in a Parisian pharmacy on Tuesday in Paris, France. Chloroquine or Hydroxychloroquine, is now one treatments being evaluated in clinical trials as a possible preventative or treatment for COVID-19. Laurent Viteur/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Laurent Viteur/Getty Images A pack of Plaquenil, (Hydrochloroquine) is displayed in a Parisian pharmacy on Tuesday in Paris, France. Chloroquine or Hydroxychloroquine, is now one treatments being evaluated in clinical trials as a possible preventative or treatment for COVID-19. Laurent Viteur/Getty Images A nationwide trial is underway to see if the drug hydroxychloroquine can prevent disease in people exposed to the novel coronavirus. A second trial will test to see if the drug can prevent severe disease in people who are already showing COVID-19 symptoms. The trials are being run by David Boulware, an infectious disease scientist at the University of Minnesota. ...

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah medical association has rescinded a recommendation it made last week on behalf of state health officials for doctors to treat coronavirus patients using malaria drugs that medical professionals across the country have cautioned against using until more testing is done. The about-face by the Utah Medical Association came after a group of infectious disease doctors pushed back over the weekend against the Friday guidance. The association said in the first email sent Friday that chloroquine and a similar drug, hydroxychloroquine, had shown "promising data for affecting the course of COVID-19" and that their recommended use was being made at the suggestion of the Utah Department of Health. The association also recommended combining them with zinc. The association reversed positions in a follow-up email Sunday in which it said the Utah Department of Health had withdrawn the previous guidance after “much collaborative discussion” and based on “a la...

The number of new cases of tuberculosis (TB) and deaths from the disease fell by 2% and 5%, respectively in 2018, but more needs to be done to reach global goals. Progress toward the End Tuberculosis Strategy global initiative were detailed in a recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It looked at data from 194 World Health Organization (WHO) member states, including overall incidence and mortality, TB among patients with HIV, TB-preventive treatment initiation, and drug-resistant TB. “Although the annual numbers of new cases of tuberculosis (TB) and deaths from TB declined in 2018 compared to 2017, at the current rate of progress, it is unlikely that the 2035 global End TB targets will be met,” Adam MacNeil, PhD, MPH, epidemiologist in the CDC’s Division of Global HIV and TB, told Contagion ® . “Initiatives to find missing TB cases; implement TB-preventive treatment (TPT) among all eligible people; provide effective...

QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus was comparable to other interferon gamma release assays for predicting tuberculosis (TB) in adults with recent contacts, according to study results published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society . Whole blood samples from adults who recently had contact exposure to people with tuberculosis were screened using QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus. Participants were linked to national TB surveillance records to identify people who were later diagnosed with TB. Positive and negative predictive values were then calculated to determine the predictive power of the test. Of the 623 people recruited, 532 had QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus results available and were to be included in the analysis. These results were positive in 180 of 532 (33.8%) tests and 39 people (21.7%) who tested positive started preventive therapy and were excluded from analysis. The positive and negative predictive values were 5.7% and 99.4%, respectively. Related Articles “[I]n this first evaluat...

A s the pandemic deepens, physicians face an agonizing decision — to medicate or not to medicate? Here’s the dilemma: Over the past few weeks, some small studies suggested a decades-old malaria drug called hydroxychloroquine may have the potential to combat the novel coronavirus known as Covid-19. And as the results trickled out, the tablet has become more valuable than gold. Prescriptions and hospital orders jumped, causing shortages. State pharmacy boards, in fact, claimed some doctors were hoarding the medicine for themselves. President Trump touted the tablet by saying he had a “feeling” it would work. The widely watched conservative TV host Laura Ingraham tweeted that one seriously ill patient recovered like “Lazarus” after being given hydroxychloroquine. advertisement At the urging of the White House, several manufacturers revived production and will donate millions of pills. And now, the Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use by hospitals. However, there’s ...

The Food and Drug Administration has authorized two malaria — chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — to be added to the national emergency stockpile for use in responding to COVID-19. Photo Illustration by John Phillips/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Photo Illustration by John Phillips/Getty Images The Food and Drug Administration has authorized two malaria — chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — to be added to the national emergency stockpile for use in responding to COVID-19. Photo Illustration by John Phillips/Getty Images Over the weekend, the Food and Drug Administration granted two malaria drugs "emergency use authorization" for the treatment of COVID-19. The move makes it easier to add the medicines to the strategic stockpile, which can be drawn upon in the current public health emergency. The drugs — chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — have been identified as potential COVID-19 treatments based on lab tests and small, limited studies in hum...

The Food and Drug Administration has issued a limited emergency-use authorization for two antimalarial drugs that President Trump has touted for the treatment of coronavirus patients. In a statement published Sunday, the US Department of Health and Human Services cited recent donations of medications to the Strategic National Stockpile, including chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, Politico reported. It said the FDA had allowed the drugs “to be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible.” The HSS said that Sandoz, a division of the Novartis Group, had donated 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine, while Bayer donated 1 million doses of chloroquine. The FDA has already given New York state permission to give desperately ill patients a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin on a “compassionate care” basis. “Let’s see how it works,” Trump said during a p...

Twitter has in the last week taken down multiple posts from public figures promoting an anti-malaria drug as a way to treat coronavirus. On Friday, the platform removed a tweet from President Trump Donald John TrumpHealth insurers Cigna, Humana waive out-of-pocket costs for coronavirus treatment Puerto Rico needs more federal help to combat COVID-19 Fauci says April 30 extension is 'a wise and prudent decision' MORE 's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani Rudy GiulianiCuomo steps into national spotlight with coronavirus fight Hannity offers to help Cuomo in coronavirus response with radio, television shows The Hill's Campaign Report: Officials in spotlight over coronavirus response MORE claiming that hydroxychloroquine is a safe way to treat COVID-19, the disease resulting from the novel coronavirus. A spokesperson for the platform confirmed that the tweet was removed for violating its rules on coronavirus misinformation. ADVERTISEMENT Twitter earlier this month said ...

A century-old tuberculosis vaccine could protect health care workers from the coronavirus, according to a report. Some 4,000 health workers in hospitals across Australia will be administered the bacillus Calmette-Guerin, or BCG vaccine, as part of a six-month trial set to begin Monday, Bloomberg reported. Researchers at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne will be probing whether the vaccine — which has been widely used for about 100 years — can reduce COVID-19 symptoms. “Although originally developed against tuberculosis, and still given to over 130 million babies annually for that purpose, BCG also boosts humans’ ‘frontline’ immunity, training it to respond to germs with greater intensity,” researchers said in a statement. The participants will be enrolled in the trial within weeks following fast-track approval from health authorities. “The clock is definitely ticking,” said lead researcher Nigel Curtis, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the Unive...

Alexandru-Flaviu Tăbăran, 1, 2, * Cristian Tudor Matea, 2, * Teodora Mocan, 2, 3, * Alexandra Tăbăran, 4, * Marian Mihaiu, 4, * Cornel Iancu, 2, 5, * Lucian Mocan 2, 3, * 1 Department of Pathology, University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; 2 Department of Nanomedicine, Regional Institute of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; 3 Department of Physiology, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; 4 Department of Public Health and Food Hygiene, University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; 5 Third Surgery Department, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania *These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence: Teodora Mocan Department of Physiology, University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca, Romania 1 Clinicilor Street, Cluj-Napoca 40006, Romania Tel +40 264 598575 Fax +40 264 599814 Email Teodora.mocan@umfcluj.ro Abstract: Rapi...

The Food and Drug Administration has issued an emergency-use authorization for two decades-old malaria drugs that have been repeatedly name-checked by President Donald Trump as a coronavirus treatment, despite a lack of solid scientific evidence that they’re effective. The agency has allowed hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to be “donated to the Strategic National Stockpile to be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible.” According to Politico, the FDA also announced that pharmaceutical company Sandoz donated 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine and Bayer donated a million doses of chloroquine. Scientists have urged caution in the use of both drugs for COVID-19, warning that there’s a lack of data on the drug’s usefulness for the disease and have expressed concerns that the hype around the drugs will take medication away from patients who need it for other condit...

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Yellowstone National Park is done capturing wild bison for the year after rounding up almost 550 of the wild animals and sending most to slaughter as part of a population control program, park officials said. The culling is carried out under a legal agreement between federal and state officials aimed at preventing the spread of an animal disease to cattle. In addition to those captured, about 270 bison have been killed by Native American tribal hunters as the hulking beasts migrated outside the park to graze at lower elevations in Montana, according to figures released Friday. The annual slaughter of an iconic animal that’s featured on the National Park Service logo has long drawn criticism from wildlife advocates and some members of Congress. Officials insist the program is necessary to prevent cattle in the Yellowstone region from being infected with brucellosis, which can cause abortions in pregnant animals. Park officials had sought to reduce Yellowston...

A pack of Hydroxychloroquine Sulfate medication is held up on March 26. John Phillips | Getty Images President Donald Trump said U.S. health officials should have a "good idea" whether an anti-malaria drug being tested as a treatment for COVID-19 is effective in fighting the coronavirus in "the next three days." "Hydroxychloroquine is something that I have been pushing very hard," Trump said Monday morning during an interview on Fox News.  "I think we're going to have a good idea over the next three days because it's been used now in New York at my request -- 1,100 people. It's been used. I think that's better than testing it in a laboratory. But the doctors tell me no." There are no proven therapies for the treatment of COVID-19 and U.S. health officials expect a vaccine could take 12 to 18 months. New York state last week began the first large-scale clinical trial using a combination of chloroquine and Azithromycin ...

Very few people have the breadth and depth of experience with infectious disease — scientific, activist, and personal — as Gregg Gonsalves. Gonsalves was a leading member of ACT UP, a militant activist group that played a vital role in waking the American public up to the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ‘90s. An HIV-positive gay man, he spent the following decades doing research and activism surrounding AIDS and other infectious diseases. He has a PhD from Yale University in epidemiology, where he’s currently a professor studying microbial diseases, and received a MacArthur fellowship (more commonly known as a Genius Grant) in 2018. So when we spoke on the phone this week and he sounded the alarm about the Trump administration’s push to relax coronavirus quarantine measures as soon as possible, I got a little panicked. “The rest of the United States [will be like] New York two weeks from now,” he told me. “You can’t relax social distancing now without risking a conflagration.” I...

For decades, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci has been known as the hardest worker in Building 31 — the first scientist to arrive at the sprawling National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Md., in the morning and the last to leave in the evening. “He’s even found notes on his windshield left by co-workers that say things like, “Go home. You’re making me feel guilty,” President George W. Bush said in 2008 when he awarded Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In the last month, the 79-year-old infectious disease expert’s schedule has gotten more grueling as he works on the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic: squeezing in three to five hours of sleep between supervising work on a potential vaccine, making hospital rounds, attending meetings of the coronavirus task force and speaking at White House news conferences. On Sunday, he predicted that the United States might eventually see 100,000 t...

However, a growing number of lupus and arthritis patients have complained that they've been unable to fill their prescriptions amid ongoing shortages, and reports have emerged that some physicians are hoarding the drug for themselves. Federal officials also have privately complained that Trump's focus on anti-malaria drugs has distracted from efforts to investigate more promising therapies. Trump has pushed to experiment with new therapies and not wait on the usual clinical protocols, given the unprecedented nature of the coronavirus pandemic. Asked by a POLITICO reporter whether his agencies should wait for more evidence on anti-malaria drugs, the president on Friday stressed the need for speed, alluding to disagreements with infectious-disease specialist Anthony Fauci — one of several officials who has privately counseled the president not to rush on unproven medicines. “I think Tony would disagree with me … [but] we have a pandemic, we have people dying now,” Trump said, ...

Issued on: 29/03/2020 - 14:48 Modified: 29/03/2020 - 14:47 Advertising Read more Paris (AFP) The controversial French professor who believes the anti-malaria drug chloroquine can help beat the coronavirus, has claimed that a new study he has conducted confirms its "efficiency" at combatting the virus. But several other scientists and critics of microbiologist Didier Raoult, who heads the infectious diseases department of La Timone hospital in Marseille, were quick to cast doubt upon his findings. They said the testing was not carried out in a controlled study and that the results were purely "observational". Dr Raoult, whose theory has been taken up by US President Donald Trump, said his new study of 80 patients showed that four out of five of those treated with the drug had "favourable" outcomes. He had earlier reported that after treating 24 patients for six days with hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin, the virus disa...