A replication-deficient gammaherpesvirus vaccine protects mice from lytic disease and reduces latency establishment.

Gammaherpesviruses are oncogenic viruses that establish lifelong infections and are significant causes of morbidity and mortality. Vaccine strategies to limit gammaherpesvirus infection and disease are in development, but there are no FDA-approved vaccines for Epstein-Barr or Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus. As a new approach to gammaherpesvirus vaccination, we developed and tested a replication-deficient virus (RDV) platform, using murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV68), a well-established mouse model for gammaherpesvirus pathogenesis studies and preclinical therapeutic evaluations.

Replication-dead gammaherpesvirus vaccine protects against acute replication, reactivation from latency, and lethal challenge in mice.

Gammaherpesviruses (GHVs) are oncogenic viruses that establish lifelong infections and are significant causes of human morbidity and mortality. While several vaccine strategies to limit GHV infection and disease are in development, there are no FDA-approved vaccines for human GHVs. As a new approach to gammaherpesvirus vaccination, we developed and tested a replication-dead virus (RDV) platform, using murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV68), a well-established mouse model for gammaherpesvirus pathogenesis studies and preclinical therapeutic evaluations.

Beliefs and Preferences for Medical Research Among African-Americans.

Background And Objectives: Numerous factors contribute to underrepresentation of African-Americans in medical research, including beliefs, historical events, structural, and health access obstacles. This study examined beliefs about medical research and the types of study methods preferred among potential African-American research participants.

Methods: A sample of 304 African-American participants from the Washington, DC Metropolitan area, completed a survey evaluating beliefs about medical research and preferred research study methods.

A geography of moral hazard: sources and sinks of motor-vehicle commuting externalities.

Motor-vehicles are responsible for harms to health that are not directly experienced by individual drivers - such as air pollution and risk of injury to pedestrians. In addition to their direct effects on health, these harms also represent a moral hazard since drivers are not required to consider their effects as part of their decision to drive. We describe an approach for estimating sources of motor-vehicle commuter externalities as a means of understanding the geography of moral hazard, and in particular, the spatial displacement of negative health externalities associated with motor-vehicle commuting.

Altering school attendance times to prevent child pedestrian injuries.

Objectives: The purpose of this research was to determine whether modifying school start time schedules can be used to reduce children's exposure to traffic on their morning walks to school.

Methods: We use models of pedestrian and motor vehicle commuting to estimate the frequency of encounters between child pedestrians and motor vehicles at intersections throughout the City of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. We use a simple heuristic to identify the school-specific start times that would most reduce the local frequency of encounters between motor vehicles and pedestrians.