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March 21, 2013 After making a comeback in the late 1980s, tuberculosis has steadily declined in the U.S. Last year alone, TB cases dropped 6 percent compared to 2011, making it the first time, the number of annual infections was below 10,000.

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March 8, 2013 Why do people in Boston get the flu when it's cold, while people in Senegal get sick when it's hot? Humidity is a big part of the explanation. But how flu spreads in the tropics and more temperate climates appears to be different.

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March 8, 2013 Texas health officials have quarantined a Nepalese man, who illegally entered the U.S. while infected with a particularly dangerous type of tuberculosis. He traveled through 13 countries, potentially exposing hundreds of people around the world to the pathogen.

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March 5, 2013 Federal health officials warned that a dangerous group of superbugs has become increasingly common in hospitals throughout the past decade. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the bacteria are resistant to virtually all antibiotics, including the ones doctors use as a last-ditch option.

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February 27, 2013 So far, there have been only a few cases of illness tied to a new kind of coronavirus. But the urgency to learn more about the virus was heightened recently when the first instances of person-to-person infection were seen.

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February 22, 2013 In early 2012, experiments that made H5N1 bird flu more contagious caused an uproar. People feared that mutant viruses could escape the lab and kill people. To prevent a repeat, the government has unveiled a policy describing how scientists should study dangerous pathogens and toxins.

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February 19, 2013 A new virus, which causes severe pneumonia, has killed a British man with a suppressed immune system. This is the sixth death from the coronavirus and the first outside the Middle East, where it emerged last year. Officials say the risk to the general population is low.

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February 13, 2013 Until now, a new SARS-like virus showed little signs of being contagious. Only 10 cases have been reported, and all appeared to originate in the Middle East. Health officials now say a British resident likely caught the virus from a family member in the U.K., indicating that the virus can spread between people.

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February 10, 2013 Chagas' disease, which is transmitted by the "kissing bug," occurs mainly in Latin America. But the illness is on the rise in the U.S. Health economists now estimate that Chagas costs the world about $7 billion annually, which is more than the cost of cervical cancer or cholera.

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January 31, 2013 There have been 20 reports of human salmonella infections linked to pet hedgehogs recently. Public health officials say people should keep the animals away from areas where food is prepared and served.

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January 23, 2013 After researchers created versions of the bird flu virus that could spread more easily, critics began to worry that the work could spawn a pandemic if a virus escaped from the lab. After halting their work for more than a year, scientists now say the benefits outweigh the risks, and they are set to restart their experiments.

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January 19, 2013 After a decades-long campaign, Guinea worm remains in only four countries, and eradication is in sight. But health workers say that recent violence in Mali is hindering efforts to stamp out the last few cases there.

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January 17, 2013 Flu viruses hijack the machinery inside animal cells to replicate. The theft is a complicated process that takes time. If the virus leaves the cells too early or too late, the risk of infection falls.

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January 17, 2013 In many parts of the world, like Europe, the plague is thought to have been eliminated. French scientists find evidence that the stubborn bacteria can trigger new outbreaks even after decades of apparent dormancy.

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January 16, 2013 Canadian scientists have developed a synthetic stool that successfully treated two patients with a severe form of diarrhea. The researchers call the concoction RePOOPulate, and they produce it using a machine that recreates conditions in the colon.

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