Disease | featured news

Chinese scientists have for the first time found strong evidence of how humans got infected with a new strain of bird flu: from chickens at a live market. In a small study of four patients who caught the new H7N9 virus, Chinese scientists compared swabs from birds at live markets in eastern China to virus samples from patients. The scientists found the virus from one patient was nearly identical to one found in a chicken. The research was published online Thursday in the journal Lancet.

More than 50 percent of patients infected with a new type of bird flu in China had no contact with poultry, the World Health Organization said on Friday, further raising questions about whether the virus was transmitted between humans.

The death toll in China's bird flu crisis stood at 10 on Friday, as Hong Kong authorities announced plans to test all poultry imported from the mainland.

As cases of H7N9 continue to grow in China, one Chinese Air Force officer is blaming the outbreak not on genetic mutations – but on the United States government. In a post on his blog Saturday, People’s Liberation Army Sr. Col. Dai Xu accused the United States of causing the recent bird flu outbreak by releasing the H7N9 virus in China as an act of biological warfare, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

A strain of bird flu that has been found in humans for the first time in eastern China is not a cause for panic, the World Health Organization said on Monday, as the number of people infected rose to 21, with six deaths.

Researchers might have found the Holy Grail in the war against cancer, a miracle drug that has killed every kind of cancer tumor it has come in contact with, the New York Post reported. The drug works by blocking a protein called CD47 that is essentially a "do not eat" signal to the body's immune system, according to Science Magazine.

By tracking one patient’s immune response, scientists have tracked how a series of mutations led to an antibody that can defeat many H.I.V. strains.

Chris Wright was playing professional basketball in Turkey last year, working toward achieving his lifelong dream of playing in the NBA, when something strange happened at the end of practice.

Genetically altering a patient’s immune cells has, for the first time, produced remissions in adults with a deadly type of acute leukemia. In one patient, all trace of the disease vanished in 8 days.

Australian experts are concerned about the threat of a new type of drug-resistant pandemic flu that is circulating in the population at large. The swine flu strain has learned how to dodge the antiviral Tamiflu and, though rare, is emerging outside of hospitals.