New research shows that infectious disease-fighting drugs could be designed to block a pathogen's entry into cells rather than to kill the bug itself.

Historically, medications for infectious diseases have been designed to kill the offending pathogen. This new strategy is important, researchers say, because many parasites and bacteria can eventually mutate their way around drugs that target them, resulting in drug resistance.

One of the most vexing challenges in the battle against dengue virus, a mosquito-borne virus responsible for 50-100 million infections every year, is that getting infected once can put people at greater risk for a more severe infection down the road.

Now, for the first time, an international team of researchers that includes experts from the University of California, Berkeley, has pulled apart the mechanism behind changing dengue virus genetics and dynamics of host immunity, and they are reporting their findings in the Dec. 21 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

The virus that causes dengue disease is divided into four closely related serotypes (dengue virus 1, 2, 3 and 4), and those serotypes can be further divided into genetic variants, or subtypes.

On August 26, 1976, a time bomb exploded in Yambuku, a remote village in Zaire, (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). A threadlike virus known as Ebola had emerged, soon earning a grim distinction as one of the most lethal, naturally occurring pathogens on earth, killing up to 90 percent of its victims, and producing a terrifying constellation of symptoms known as hemorrhagic fever.

Now, Charles Arntzen, a researcher at the Biodesign Institute® at Arizona State University, along with colleagues from ASU, the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, MD, have made progress toward a vaccine against the deadly virus.

Researchers have just revealed a key discovery in understanding how the most deadly species of malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, invades human red blood cells. Using a technique developed at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, they have found that the parasite relies on a single receptor on the red blood cell's surface to invade, offering an exciting new focus for vaccine development.

Malaria kills approximately one million people every year, mostly children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa. Currently no licensed vaccine is available.

Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, not all epidemics involve people suffering from zombie-like symptoms - some can only be uncovered through door-to-door epidemiology and advanced mathematics.

Michael Levy, PhD, assistant professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, along with other collaborators from Penn, Johns Hopkins University, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru, are in the trenches combining tried-and-true epidemiological approaches with new statistical methods to learn more about the course of a dangerous, contagious disease epidemic. Their research was published last week in PLoS Computational Biology.

Team from the Medical University of Vienna, led by Harald Noedl from the Institute of Specific Prophylaxis and Tropical Medicine, is developing a new treatment concept for complex malaria in Bangladesh. This treatment is intended to significantly cut the mortality rate and could save the lives of tens of thousands of children.

Even at the start of the 21st century, over 2,000 people die every day from malaria, a disease that is primarily associated with poverty. The majority of victims are claimed in Africa, and especially the weakest amongst them, children. In most cases, the condition can be managed without complications if it is spotted and treated in time. In cases where complications occur, however, the mortality rate continues to be extremely high.

For millions of people who live under the constant threat of Leishmania infection, a new discovery by Brazilian scientists may lead to new breakthroughs, preventing these parasites from taking hold in the body or reducing the severity of infections once they occur. In a new report appearing in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (http://www.jleukbio.org), scientists show that specific molecules found in the saliva of the sandfly - a small flying insect that is the vector for the parasite - make it possible for Leishmania to evade neutrophils and live within human hosts. In addition to providing a new target for drug development, this discovery may lead to new tools that help doctors more accurately gauge the severity of infections.

An investigation into the mysterious inner workings of the malaria parasite has revealed that it survives and proliferates in the human bloodstream thanks in part to a single, crucial chemical that the parasite produces internally.

Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are disappearing in some parts of Africa, but scientists are unsure as to why.

Figures indicate controls such as anti-mosquito bed nets are having a significant impact on the incidence of malaria in some sub-Saharan countries.