Let’s talk about Coronaviruses. Coronaviruses are a whole family of viruses, and they cause all kinds of diseases in chickens, pigs, cows, and many other animals. They’ve also […]
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Category: Diseases
Buzzing about Modified Mosquito Behavior
You know that characteristic buzzing and that itchy feeling that comes with a mosquito bite. As you scratch your new bite, you may wonder exactly why mosquitoes are so attracted […]
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How the Tick Immune System Works
What’s up with Ticks? Ticks transmit more than 10 different human diseases. The most common is Lyme disease. It’s estimated that bites mostly from the blacklegged or deer tick cause […]
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Flesh-Eating Disease is Worse than it Sounds
Necrotizing Fasciitis or, as it is more commonly known, flesh-eating disease is a rare but deadly infection of the skin and soft tissues. It infects around 200,000 people a year […]
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The Genetic Origins of Cancer
In 2016, an estimated 595,690 people died from cancer in the United States. That’s a little less than the population of Boston. New advancements in treatment have lowered the cancer […]
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The Trouble with Genetic Diversity – Part 2 – Cancer!
In 2016, over 1.5M cases of cancer were diagnosed in the United States and about 600,000 people died from the disease. To put that into perspective, 600,000 is the number of […]
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How to Make the Flu Vaccine Better
Have you ever gotten the flu vaccine but still gotten the flu? We make about 160 million vaccine doses every year in the US, but they vary in effectiveness from year […]
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Is There Already a Zika Treatment?
Humans contract zika via mosquito or through sexual contact. While most people recover from infection, it can have some intense side-effects for pregnant women. We know that infection during pregnancy comes with […]
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Can We Cure Autoimmune Diseases?
What do you do when your illness isn’t caused by bacteria or viruses, but is instead caused by your own immune system? Researchers are developing new technologies that could help cure autoimmune diseases.
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Why Haven’t We Cured HIV yet?
Millions of people in the world are living with HIV. Scientists have been researching this virus for over 30 years and all we have are subpar treatments. Why is that the best we have? Why haven’t we cured HIV yet?
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