During the Ebola outbreak of 1995 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, eight patients with Ebola were given blood transfusions from people who had recently recovered from Ebola. Seven of them survived.

The blood of people who have recently recovered from an infection contains antibodies that the body develops naturally to fight that infection. The transfusion of these antibodies into infected individuals (as whole blood, plasma, or concentrated antibodies) has a long history and has been proposed as a possible treatment for Ebola virus disease.

see more at: http://www.dddmag.com/news/2016/03/treating-ebola-plasma

nytimes.com - March 7th 2016 - Aaron E. Carroll

A century ago, the top three causes of death were infectious diseases. More than half of all people dying in the United States died because of germs. Today, they account for a few percent of deaths at most.

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submitted by John Carroll

A woman who is six months pregnant shows a photo of her ultrasound at the IMIP hospital in Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil, on Wednesday. Scientists are trying to figure out how Zika virus may be affecting fetuses.  Felipe Dana/AP

CLICK HERE - NEJM - Zika Virus Infection in Pregnant Women in Rio de Janeiro — Preliminary Report

npr.com - by Rob Stein - March 4, 2016

The Zika virus has sparked international alarm largely because of fears that the pathogen is causing microcephaly, a condition in which babies are born with unusually small heads and damaged brains.

But the preliminary results of a study released Friday suggest Zika can also cause other potentially grave complications for fetuses carried by women who get infected while they are pregnant.

"There seems to be a whole spectrum of conditions that are related to this — not only microcephaly," says Karin Nielsen-Saines, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA who led the study.

Image: Government forces recently retook a power plant in Aleppo province from Islamic State militants.

BBC.com - March 3rd 2016

Syria has suffered a massive power blackout across the country due to "unknown reasons", state media said.

Officials were cited as saying power had been cut in all provinces and teams were trying to determine the cause.

The electricity ministry said power was being restored and service would resume by midnight (22:00 GMT), TV reported.

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