Evaluation of Mass Vaccination Clinics in Response to a Serogroup B Meningococcal Disease Outbreak at a Large, Public University-Oregon, 2015.

Purpose: Between January and May 2015, seven people at a large, public university developed invasive serogroup B meningococcal disease. One case was fatal. Attack rates were highest among freshmen and members of sororities, and fraternities (Greek organizations).

Core courses in public health laboratory science and practice: findings from 2006 and 2011 surveys.

Objectives: We identified academic training courses or topics most important to the careers of U.S. public health, environmental, and agricultural laboratory (PHEAL) scientist-managers and directors, and determined what portions of the national PHEAL workforce completed these courses.

Basic personnel tools to help ensure a future public health and environmental laboratory workforce.

Competition is growing in the United States for a shrinking national pool of qualified laboratory scientists. Public health and environmental laboratories (PHELs) must address this problem using a range of strategies and tools to ensure that a highly technical workforce of PHEL scientists is available in the future. One of these tools is the use of common personnel standards involving job titles and definitions, job classifications and minimum qualifications, and multi-step career paths.

A quadruplex real-time PCR assay for rapid detection and differentiation of the Clostridium botulinum toxin genes A, B, E and F.

Clostridium botulinum is the aetiological agent of botulism, a disease marked by flaccid paralysis that can progress to asphyxiation and death. This species is defined by the production of one of the botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs), which are the most potent toxins known. Because of their potency, these toxins have the potential to be used as biological weapons, and therefore C.

Clinical recovery and circulating botulinum toxin type F in adult patient.

A 56-year-old woman in Helena, Montana, USA, who showed clinical signs of paralysis, received antitoxins to botulinum toxins A, B, and E within 24 hours; nevertheless, symptoms progressed to complete quadriplegia. On day 8, she began moving spontaneously, even though blood tests later showed botulinum toxin type F remained.