Latest Syncytium Stories

Finding ends 5-decade searchResearchers at the University of Toronto, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), St. Paul's Hospital and the University of British Columbia have identified a new treatment target for a virus that causes severe lung infections and an estimated 10% of common colds.The virus, called human respiratory syncytial virus or RSV, is the most common reason for hospitalization of infants and children under two years of age; currently there is no effective therapy or...

GAITHERSBURG, Md., May 3 /PRNewswire/ -- MedImmune, the global biologics unit of AstraZeneca, announced today that researchers will present results from five studies in the areas of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) at the 2010 Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting taking place May 1-4, 2010 in Vancouver, BC, Canada. MedImmune abstracts to be presented at PAS regarding RSV include: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) Hospitalization in infants with Chronic Lung Disease (CLD): An...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va., Sept. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Approximately one-half of all infants are infected with the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) during the first year of life, and almost all children have been infected at least once by the time they reach their second birthday. Researchers at West Virginia University have discovered what makes RSV such a severe and persistent illness. Senior author Giovanni Piedimonte, M.D., and his team have discovered that RSV prompts the release of a...

Researchers from Durham University's Centre for Bioactive Chemistry are developing methods that show how proteins interact with cell membranes when a virus strikes. Using their approach, the team hopes to find new ways to disrupt and disarm 'enveloped viruses' before they spread in our bodies.Team members, Dr John Sanderson and Dr Paul Yeo from Durham University have helped produce the first ever, high-resolution, full-length structure of a protein from an enveloped virus called the 'matrix...

U.S. researchers said on Wednesday that a highly contagious respiratory virus is far more widespread among children than once thought and puts more of them in the hospital than influenza.The respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV, affects 2.1 million children under the age of 5 each year.Dr. Caroline Breese Hall of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York discovered that over the last four years, the virus was responsible for 20 percent of hospitalizations, 18 percent of...