virus

For tens of years, thousands of researchers have been working hard to find a cure for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, better known as AIDS. Now a team of researchers from the Infectious Diseases and AIDS Service of the Hospital Clínico de Barcelona has taken another step on this path by presenting a therapeutic vaccine that has shown more than encouraging results in trials ...

One of the reasons why we still do not have a cure for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is that it infects the cells of the immune system responsible for activating the response that should stop the infection. Spanish scientists from the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute could remedy it after having found the entry point of HIV to these dendritic cells, an enigma that the scientific community has been trying to decipher for years.

There is no doubt that being a parent can be physically and mentally exhausting on many occasions. However, it also has health benefits, as researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (USA) have shown. In a study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, Sheldon Cohen and Rodlescia Sneed reveal that, when exposed to the cold virus, fathers and mothers are 52% less likely to contract the disease than those who do not have children.

The influenza A virus has a complex molecular machine that allows it to replicate within the cells it infects. Now, a group of researchers from the National Center for Biotechnology of the CSIC (Madrid) has discovered the structure of said machine, a finding that solves mysteries about the life cycle of this virus that, although it is endemic to birds, is occasionally transmitted to the man and other mammals and can cause epidemics.

Fluoxetine - better known by its first brand name: Prozac-, in addition to being a potent antidepressant, is also a promising antiviral agent, as shown by a study published in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. Using molecular screening techniques, the researchers at the University of California (USA) found that fluoxetine inhibited the replication of coxsakievirus, a virus that causes numerous infections and diseases.

Scientists at Berkeley Laboratories, in the United States, have managed to produce electricity using small generators full of viruses that are harmless to humans and genetically modified. It is a promising first step towards the development of small devices that "harvest" electricity from daily tasks, for example to charge the mobile with the energy we produce when we step on the ground while we walk, according to the magazine today ' Nature Nanotechnology '.

One in six cancers, a total of two million new cases a year worldwide, is caused by infections that can be treated or prevented. The percentage is even higher in developing countries, especially in the Asian continent, according to a study published in the British medical journal 'The Lancet Infectious Diseases'.

The herpes simplex virus HSV-1 and Alzheimer's are related. This is the conclusion reached by researchers from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and the Center for Molecular Biology "Severo Ochoa" in an article published in the Journal of Neuroscience Research.