Targeted social distancing to mitigate pandemic influenza can be designed through simulation of influenza's spread within local community social contact networks. We demonstrate this design for a stylized community representative of a small town in the United States. The critical importance of children and teenagers in transmission of influenza is first identified and targeted. For influenza as...

One of the most difficult problems in HIV care today is the management of individuals infected with multidrug-resistant viruses. Well-controlled, carefully designed clinical trials have recently resulted in the approval of several new antiviral agents for the treatment of drug-resistant HIV. The design of these trials has come at the cost of the predictable emergence of drug-resistant viruses a...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) afflicts around 20 million people worldwide and so there is an urgent need for effective treatment. Our research showing that herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1) is a risk factor for AD for the brains of people who possess a specific genetic factor and that the virus causes accumulation of key AD proteins (β-amyloid (Aβ) and abnormally phosphorylated tau (P-tau)), sugges...

Influenza is not trivial. During the first post-pandemic winter (2010-11), there were 8797 hospital admissions for influenza in England alone. At the peak, there were 851 influenza cases in critical care beds (~20% of UK capacity), mostly younger adults and children with pandemic H1N1. Prehospital antiviral use was uncommon (<3%), yet antibacterial drugs were often prescribed (25% in our series...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Medicinal plants have been traditionally used for different kinds of ailments including infectious diseases. There is an increasing need for substances with antiviral activity since the treatment of viral infections with the available antiviral drugs often leads to the problem of viral resistance. Herpes simplex virus (HSV) causes a variety of life threatening diseases. ...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have shown a much greater antiviral activity of alkaline extract of the leaves of Sasa senanensis Rehder (SE) against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), compared to lignin precursors, tannins and flavonoids, suggesting its possible application to oral diseases. Systematic comparative study with herpes simplex virus (HSV) has been limited compared to that with HIV. I...