Vaccine Innovation Conference
May 10, 2017Hyatt Regency Montreal Montreal, Quebec vaccineinnovationconference.ca The Vaccine Innovation Conference will be held May 10, 2017 in Montreal hosted by the Vaccine Industry Committee. This one day conference will include academic, industry and government leaders focusing on vaccine innovation in Canada. The goal of this one-day event is improved knowledge exchange and awareness of Canadian vaccine innovations and accomplishments to support investment for vaccine R&D. The Vaccine Innovation Conference is...
Annual repeat influenza vaccination effects: new research results published
A team led by Danuta Skowronski (Epidemiology Lead, Influenza & Emerging Respiratory Pathogens) of the BC Centre for Disease Control, published a scientific paper last week in the Journal of Infectious Diseases (JID) that may also be of interest to you. The paper reflects the collaborative input of investigators from the Canadian Sentinel Practitioner Surveillance Network (SPSN) and the University of Cambridge (UK). In this paper, the effects of annual repeat influenza vaccination are...
Health Canada: Fluoroquinolone safety information update
Fluoroquinolones: Fluoroquinolones are a class of prescription antibiotic, approved for use in Canada to treat many types of bacterial infections, including respiratory and urinary tract infections. They include: ciprofloxacin (Cipro), moxifloxacin (Avelox), levofloxacin, norfloxacin and ofloxacin. Current labeling includes a warning that the drugs can lead to tendon ruptures. Health Canada Review: Health Canada reviewed the potential risk of side effects from the use of oral or injected fluoroquinolones, focusing on the more serious known side effects: Tendonitis/tendinopathy (tendon...
Influenza A(H3N2) and RSV Activity Still High in BC
The BCCDC's latest Influenza Surveillance Bulletin reports that flu activity remained high in BC during the second week of 2017 (January 8 to 14, 2017), suggesting that the epidemic peak has not yet been reached this season. A(H3N2) has been the dominant subtype so far this season, but respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) activity also remains elevated. Since the last bulletin one week ago, 30 new influenza outbreaks were reported. Cumulatively, 113 facility influenza...
Medicines that reduce heartburn may also increase the risk of gastrointestinal infections
From The Washington Post: Most heartburn drugs reduce the production of the stomach acids that cause the burning pain. Might this lower acidity also have less desirable effects? The studyThe researchers analyzed data on 564,969 people, most of them 20 to 80 years old, including 188,323 who had been prescribed acid-suppressing medications. These drugs included proton-pump inhibitors (such as Nexium, Prilosec and Prevacid) and histamine blockers, also called H2-receptor antagonists (such as...
Ebola virus found in lungs of health care worker
From the Washington Post: Ebola has proven itself a tricky foe to get rid of in the human body. In numerous cases in which it was thought to be gone and patients fully recovered, the virus has been found in the eyes, semen, amniotic fluid, placenta, breast milk and central nervous system. Now a paper published in the journal PLOS Pathogens describes another possible hiding place for the virus: the lungs. The case study involves a...
Keeping warm DOES help you fight off colds!
The common cold virus can reproduce itself more efficiently in the cooler temperature found inside the nose than at core body temperature, according to a new Yale-led study. This finding may confirm the popular, yet contested, notion that people are more likely to catch a cold in cool-weather conditions. Researchers have long known that the most frequent cause of the common cold, the rhinovirus, replicates more readily in the slightly cooler...