This Fake Skin Fools Mosquitoes—to Fight the Diseases They Spread
The world’s deadliest animal is a picky eater. Because they transmit viral diseases like Zika and chikungunya, and the parasites that cause malaria,…
Browsing Tag
infectious disease
The Last Drug That Can Fight Gonorrhea Is Starting to Falter
To an unfamiliar eye, the press release from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health two weeks ago looked pretty routine. Its language was a little…
The Bittersweet Defeat of Mpox
For a few weeks this summer, the world worried that monkeypox might become the next global pandemic. At the peak in early August the US was recording 600…
The UK Is Enduring an Onslaught of Scarlet Fever. Is the US Next?
It’s that backdrop of cases—rising to historic heights with no clear explanation why—that reinforces the alarm over scarlet fever now. The World Health…
Turns Out Fighting Mosquitoes With Mosquitoes Actually Works
The Aedes aegypti mosquito is not just a nuisance—it’s a known carrier of dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, and Zika viruses. Distinguished by the black and…
The $6 Billion Shot at Making New Antibiotics—Before the Old Ones Fail
Dustin Brown, a slight, dark-haired guy who lives in southwest Indiana, is 36, married, and a stay-at-home dad. He never expected to achieve any of those…
Thawing Permafrost Exposes Old Pathogens—and New Hosts
The Arctic—that remote, largely undisturbed, 5.5 million square miles of frozen terrain—is heating up fast. In fact, it’s warming nearly four times quicker…
Where Did Omicron Come From? Maybe Its First Host Was Mice
It’s one of the perplexing mysteries of the Covid pandemic: Where did Omicron emerge from, almost one year ago? The fast-moving, extremely contagious variant…
Wildfire Smoke May Carry Deadly Fungi Long Distances
Glowing red skies and bitter ash-laden air are increasingly common across much of the US as the warming climate fuels vast wildfires. For years now,…
When Will the Pandemic Truly Be ‘Over’?
When the pandemic began, we could imagine that the restoration of specific things we’d put on hold would signal life was returning to normal. Schools would…