What’s Going around

A bad cough, sneezing, and congestion: we try to avoid these symptoms at all costs but thousands of adults still go without the recommended vaccinations every year.

Studies show only one-third of adults take the flu shot during the season. And other more dangerous diseases are also being put on the back burner.

The most forgotten illness is chickenpox.  It’s not just for kids.  In fact, adults are 10 times more likely to be hospitalized when they have chicken pox than are children. the Centers for Disease Control recommends two doses of the vaccine if you’ve never had it.

If you’re 60 or older, you’re not off the hook.  one million adults get shingles every year. It’s caused by the same virus as chickenpox.  It stays dormant for years and can reactivate, causing severe pain. the shingles vaccine is recommended for all adults over 60.

Finally, whooping cough. For years one shot as a child was considered enough, but doctors say it’s becoming more of an adult problem.  Doctors suggest adults, especially parents, have one Tdap vaccine followed by a tetanus booster every 10 years.

Your doctor should review your status with you every check-up.  Blood tests can show if you need the vaccine for some types of diseases, but the best best is to just get re-vaccinated. Experts say even if you’ve taken the shot in the past, it won’t harm you.

• Copyright 2012 by Ivanhoe Broadcast News and News4Jax.com. all rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

as well as symptoms of
small pox, ebola
avian(bird) flue
HIV,
westnile virus,
chicken pox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers say they have developed a cream that might prevent herpes infection for as long as a week — a potentially big step in protecting women from the sexually transmitted infection.

The cream uses a new kind of therapy called RNA interference to turn off genes that the virus uses to invade cells, the researchers reported on Wednesday.

The cream, being developed by Massachusetts-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals inc, protected mice from herpes simplex 2, the virus that causes genital herpes, Deborah Palliser of Harvard Medical School in Boston and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and colleagues reported.

"a vaginal microbicide able to protect against HSV-2 transmission could contribute significantly to controlling sexually transmitted diseases," Palliser’s team wrote in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

The World Health Organization estimates that 536 million people worldwide are infected with genital herpes, a painful and incurable virus which is highly infectious and can kill newborns.

Herpes viruses head straight to nerve cells, where they stay latent for the life of an animal or person, often causing periodic outbreaks.

Related viruses are herpes simplex 1, which causes cold sores, and varicella, which causes chicken pox and returns in middle or old age as herpes zoster to cause shingles.

Acyclovir and related drugs can suppress symptoms and are available as both creams or pills but have not been shown to prevent infection.

An estimated one in five Americans have genital herpes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while 100 million have HSV-1.

As a new route to making better drugs, several companies have locked onto technology using small, interfering RNAs or siRNAs. these are molecules that can silence microRNAs — tiny strands of RNA, or ribonucleic acid, that help turn genes into proteins.

The Alnylam drug targets a gene called nectin-1. Mice genetically engineered to lack this gene are less likely to be infected with HSV-2.

But the cream "silencing" nectin-1 took a day or so to become effective. Attacking a second gene called UL29, found in the virus itself, provided immediate protection, they wrote.

Using both provided about a week of protection, they said. they used a type of cholesterol to help carry the siRNAs and the resulting cream did not irritate the vaginas of the mice, they said.

"Topically applied siRNAs might be useful to treat and prevent reactivation and sexual transmission of clinically latent HSV-2 infection," they wrote.

More work is needed, they stressed, but the approach might work for other sexually transmitted infections — notably the AIDS virus.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

© Copyright (c) Reuters

What virus(s) have Chicken Pox like symptoms but can cause kidney failure? this virus is often misdiagnosed as Chicken Pox and patients arriving in the emergency room are often sent home and told to come back in a week. the usual outcome, however, is that their kidney's start to fail.

maybe shingles or fifth's disease….

all of the above

Meningitis. there are other more possibilities as the symptoms could be very flexible.