U.S. Agencies Award Grants To Study Ecology of Infectious Diseases: Ecologists to Study West Nile virus, Malaria, Bird Flu and Other Diseases
International Information Programs - USINFO.STATE.GOV
30 Oct 2006
Photo courtesy of Associated Press
Unprecedented changes in biodiversity over the past 20 years have coincided with the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases around the world. To address this problem, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will fund eight projects under the Ecology of Infectious Diseases (EID) program, a multiyear joint agency effort in its seventh year of funding, NIH officials announced October 27.
Potential benefits of the program include development of a disease-transmission theory, better understanding of unintended health effects of development projects, better forecasting of outbreaks and a better understanding of how diseases emerge and re-emerge.
"The joint program supports efforts to create a predictive understanding of the ecological and biological mechanisms that govern relationships among human-induced environmental changes and transmission of infectious diseases," said Samuel Scheiner, program director in NSF's biological sciences directorate, which funds the EID program along with NSF's geosciences directorate.
Yellowstone, Universities to Study Wildlife Diseases
The Associated Press (posted by HelenaIR.com)
31 Oct 2006
Yellowstone National Park and two universities plan to collaborate in a program to track and study wildlife diseases. Those of concern include chronic wasting disease in deer and elk; whirling disease in fish; hantavirus, which is spread by deer mice and has caused human fatalities; and mosquito-borne West Nile virus, found in humans and animals.
The Yellowstone Wildlife Health program spanning five years is intended to examine diseases already found among the park's animals and other disorders that appear to be edging close. "What worked to its advantage for hundreds of years was (Yellowstone's) relative isolation, but that's just breaking down," said David Roberts, head of the ecology department at Montana State University. "You have all these organisms that are moving around much more than they used to."
MSU and the University of California at Davis will participate in the Yellowstone Wildlife Health Program. The private Yellowstone Park Foundation hopes to raise $222,220 for the program to begin next spring, said Michael Cary, the foundation's director.
Contagious Critters
Jackson Hole Star-Tribune
31 Oct 2006
Rena Delbridge
Several outbreaks of tularemia around Wyoming have state health officials cautioning hunters and recreationists to take basic precautions. Tularemia, also known as rabbit fever or deer fly fever, typically infects rabbits, hares and rodents. People and domestic animals can become infected through contact with the bacteria or through bites from deer flies.
This year, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has documented rabbit die-offs by Newcastle and near Pumpkin Buttes in northeast Wyoming, according to wildlife disease specialist Hank Edwards. Additional dead rabbits are being spotted across Thunder Basin National Grassland and into other regions of Converse County.
“It’s bad, but it's par for the course anytime you get a rabbit population that high,” said Game and Fish Warden Rod Lebert, stationed in Douglas. More rabbits raise the likelihood of larger die-offs because the animals are more concentrated. Two people in Wyoming contracted tularemia this year, said Jamie Snow, a public health veterinarian for the Wyoming Department of Health.
Danes Devilled by Deadly DiseaseThe Daily Telegraph
25 Oct 2006
Photo Courtesy of The Daily Telegraph
A deadly infectious cancer has been found in Tasmanian devils from the same wildlife park that sent animals to Denmark for Princess Mary.
Two devils from Trowunna Wildlife Park at Mole Creek have tested positive to Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD).
In April, a group of devils from the same northern Tasmanian park were sent to Copenhagen Zoo as a christening gift for Prince Christian the baby of Crown Prince Frederik and Princess Mary, Tasmania's princess from Taroona.
Authorities said the Danish zoo had been notified about the disease discovery on Monday. The royal gift drew howls of protest from senior wildlife and health authorities who feared Tasmania could be exporting a deadly disease. There is no vaccine, cure or pre-clinical test for it.
Dead Ducks Prove Avian Cholera Moving North: Researcher
CBC News
30 Oct 2006
More than 3,000 common eider ducks found dead on Nunavut's South Hampton Island this summer were infected with avian cholera, a scientist with the Canadian Wildlife Service says. Although avian cholera is a naturally-occurring disease in birds, it has never been detected that far north, Grant Gilchrist told CBC News Friday.
"It's pretty grim when you consider the island is only 800 metres long and there's over 3,000 dead birds and these are large birds," Gilchrist said. "The smell is awful and it attracts a lot of herring gulls and it's a mess." As far as intervention, Gilchrist said there is really nothing that can be done to help the birds.
"It really has to take its course and we're trying to monitor it to see how widespread it is and whether the problem is growing in Nunavut," he said. Gilchrist is concerned because it is not known where the disease is coming from or how fast it is spreading. The disease was first detected in northern Quebec three years ago when about 200 dead birds were found.
Effect Measure - Influenza Virus, Science Background, I. [Instructional]
Scienceblogs.com
30 Oct 2006
revere
Avian influenza, as its name suggests, is a disease of birds. Most aquatic waterfowl seem to tolerate infections with the virus with little difficulty (there are exceptions, especially with H5N1), while terrestrial poultry seem to do very badly, indeed. The H5N1 subtype of the virus also infects other animals, including mammals like cats, dogs, ferrets, horses, pigs and humans.
Most readers here know that the H and N designations refer to the proteins on the outside of the virus but don't know much about the general subject of lipoproteins, so these posts will be for those of you who want to know a little of what this is all about, especially how this is related to things like what animals can be infected and how the immune system responds to different viral strains.
For a lot of you this will be much more than you want to know, but there are a number of lay and professional (but non-specialist) readers of this blog who have become quite knowledgeable and this is meant to provide some additional background. So we'll start at the beginning.
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