Adjuvants: progress, regress and pandemic preparedness

Effective pandemic preparedness.

Since the identification of 2009-H1N1 in the spring, the virus has caused human disease worldwide and has led to the first influenza pandemic in 4 decades. In North America, despite the unexpectedness of being the early center of the emerging epidemic, public health agencies, health care systems, and medical providers were able to make the immediate switch from preparedness to response, even af...

Influenza Pandemic Preparedness

n the list of potential bioterrorist agents, influenza would be classified as a category C agent (1). While previous influenza pandemics were naturally occurring events, an influenza pandemic could be started with an intentional release of a deliberately altered influenza strain. Even if a deliberately altered strain is not released, an influenza pandemic originating from natural origins will i...

[Pharmacotherapy of Parkinson's disease: progress or regress?].

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic, progressive disease of the central nervous system (CNS), characterized by a slow loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra, leading to significant decrease in dopamine (DA) levels in the striatum. Currently used drugs, such as levodopa (L-DOPA), amantadine, dopamine agonists (D) or anticholinergic drugs, are not effective enough, and do not elim...

Destigmatization of Hiv: Progress or Regress?

The HIV epidemic has resulted in a renewed interest by social scientists in stigmatization and in a corresponding need to reconceptualize stigma, especially its relationship to power. While the professions have some power to control stigma, the emergence of self-help and mutual aid groups such as those founded by the gay activists involved in the AIDS epidemic, has shown that patients are not s...

Options for financing pandemic preparedness