Federal health officials warned that the risk of contracting dengue in the United States has increased this year, a worrying sign as global cases of the mosquito-borne disease hit record numbers. In the first half of this year, countries in the Americas reported twice as many cases as were reported in all of 2023, the…
Elephant seals in South America died in massive numbers because the bird flu virus acquired mutations that allowed it to spread among mammals, according to a new study. The research offers the first genetic and epidemiological evidence of bird flu virus transmission among mammals. And the findings hold a warning: The virus, called H5N1, may…
Milk contaminated with H5N1, the bird-flu virus that has turned up in dairy herds in nine states, has been found to rapidly make mice sick, affecting multiple organs, according to a study published on Friday. The findings are not entirely surprising: At least a half-dozen cats have died after consuming raw milk containing the virus….
The bird flu virus sweeping across dairy farms in multiple states has acquired dozens of new mutations, including some that may make it more adept at spreading between species and less susceptible to antiviral drugs, according to a new study. None of the mutations is a cause for alarm on its own. But they underscore…
Federal regulators on Friday said that they had not yet discovered live bird flu virus in the first batch of retail milk samples they tested, a reassuring indication that the milk on store shelves remains safe despite an outbreak of the virus among diary cows. In an online update, the Food and Drug Administration said…
Federal regulators on Tuesday said that samples of pasteurized milk from around the country had tested positive for inactive remnants of the bird flu virus that has been infecting dairy cows. The viral fragments do not pose a threat to consumers, officials said. “To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that…
This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times. Yvonne Barr was a 31-year-old research assistant seeking a new challenge when she was hired by a pathologist in London in 1963 to help find the cause of an unusual malignancy: exceptionally…
In March of 1961, Dr. Anthony Epstein, a pathologist at Middlesex Hospital in London, almost skipped a visiting physician’s afternoon lecture about children with exceptionally large facial tumors in Uganda. The physician, Dr. Denis Burkitt, a native of Ireland who called himself a bush surgeon, showed slides of bulbous tumors that emerged along the jawline…
An Alaska man died last month of Alaskapox, a rare virus that occurs mostly in small mammals and can cause skin lesions, according to state health officials. Alaskapox was first identified in 2015 in a woman who lived near Fairbanks, Alaska, and there have been a total of seven cases of the virus reported to…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday revised its guidelines for tracking the genetic signatures of viruses collected from people newly diagnosed with H.I.V., a controversial practice used by state and local health departments to curb infections. The updated policy encouraged health officials to be more transparent with their communities about the tracking,…
