For the sixth summer in a row, pneumonic tularaemia has been recorded on Martha's Vineyard, an island off Cape Cod in Massachusetts, USA. There are thought to be 200 cases of tularaemia in the USA annually, but these are mainly the ulceroglandular form of the disease, whereas on Martha's Vineyard, 23 out of the 30 confirmed cases since 2000 have been the pneumonic form. Many of the affected individuals, including this first recorded case in 2005, were landscapers, and the disease is thought to be caused by inhaling aerosols of contaminated dust, soil or grass when the earth is disturbed by mowing or excavating ground. The complete genome sequence of the causative agent of tularaemia, Francisella tularensis, was published earlier this year in Nature Genetics. PromedMail
Cholera remains a major threat to public health in developing countries where access to clean drinking water is not guaranteed. Currently, in some developed countries, cholera vaccines are available and are used by some travellers. In the 15 August issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the results of a randomized controlled trial of one live attenuated oral vaccine, Peru-15, in adult volunteers in Bangladesh are published. Peru-15 has previously been tested in clinical trials in the United States, in which it has been proven to be efficacious, but this is the first trial in a cholera-endemic country. No adverse effects were detected, and the vaccine was found to be immunogenic and genetically stable after human passage. In other cholera news, Harvard researcher John Mekalanos, in conjunction with Avant Immunotherapeutics, has been awarded US$500,000 from the NIH for work on making Avant's CholeraGarde vaccine thermostable. JID /NIH
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