Infection | featured news

...Korth was on a fishing trip in Port O’Connor this past weekend competing in a tournament, according to family and friends. They believe that is where he contracted the flesh-eating bacteria. Korth’s leg was amputated two inches above the knee.

Doctors' attempts to combat rare, aggressive bacteria that have infected a University of West Georgia graduate student have suffered a further setback: 24-year-old Aimee Copeland's remaining foot and both her hands were amputated, according to a blog on the school's website.

A foundation devoted to education about and treatment of flesh-eating bacteria cites government figures estimating 500 to 1,500 cases occur in the United States each year. But media coverage of these cases is rare, so the story of a Georgia grad student fighting the disease may help raise awareness, the foundation's co-founder says.

The rare disease commonly known as flesh-eating bacteria has claimed another victim: a South Carolina woman who had just given birth to a healthy set of twins and who noticed an unusual spot on the back of her leg.

The doctors for Aimee Copeland are promising a "roller coaster ride of highs and lows" in the coming weeks and months as she struggles against a rare "flesh-eating" bacteria, her father said.

A teenager who lost all four limbs because of a vaccination error has won a $12.6 million award in a lawsuit against the University of Miami medical school. The Miami jury reached the verdict Friday in the case of Shaniah Rolle of Miramar. A judge will likely reduce the award because jurors found Rolle's mother partly at fault for not giving her enough medication.

Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, a breast cancer survivor, was admitted to a hospital Tuesday morning for treatment of an infection that her aides said was related to the reconstructive surgery she underwent this summer.

Provocative new research shows that treating people with the AIDS virus can provide a powerful bonus: It cuts the risk that they will infect others.

It was thought that fetal immune cells were too immature to be useful and that fetuses and newborns relied on antibodies provided by their mothers. Now David Vermijlen at the Institute for Medical Immunology in Brussels, Belgium, and his colleagues have shown that fetuses just 21 weeks old may be capable of fending off infections using ...

The vaccine, Prevnar 13, is effective against more types of bacteria, particularly a virulent subtype called strain 19A.