A new study from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) reveals that a particular group of common, hard-to-treat viruses can join together to create clusters. That group of viruses then becomes both extremely efficient and very difficult for the body to detect.

The research, which was published in August 2018, could permanently change what we know about viruses and infection.

Until recently scientists believed that viruses acted independently. Now we know that up to 40 of them can form into vesicles, which are essentially membrane-bound packets or spheres.

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Vaccines have been a crucial part of the fight against infectious diseases for more than 200 years.

But, those initial vaccines were primitive compared to today’s science. Modern vaccines are now our best defense against disease throughout the world.

The Australian Academy of Science states that in the “past 20 years, vaccine technology has improved, resulting in production of vaccines against a broad range of infectious diseases.” Our recent progress creates an optimism for future vaccines, but the future is still uncertain. There are constant challenges for vaccine improvement needed every year.

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We’ve long struggled to defend against dengue fever. Without a vaccine available, how can you prevent the mosquito-borne disease?

By changing the mosquitoes, apparently.

An initiative focused in the Australian town of Townsville proved that theory. The town noticed a dramatic decrease of dengue outbreaks thanks to modified mosquitoes.

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In July 2018, the U.S. Federal Drug Administration officially approved the first new medicine for relapsing malaria in more than 60 years.

The development of the drug, tafenoquine, was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Foundation CEO Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann says that approval of the drug “is a major milestone along the road to ending the scourge of malaria for good.”

While this event is notable in itself, tafenoquine (also known by the name Krintafel) is quite impressive. The drug is a single-dose treatment that fights the most prevalent human malaria parasite in the world, Plasmodium vivax.

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A century ago the world was shaken by the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, an event that infected about one-third of the world’s population. The epidemic ultimately resulted in about 50 to 100 millions deaths.

While many people may know how destructive the Spanish Flu was, few realize how much it shaped modern medicine and our response to outbreaks. In 1918, the world learned the immense value of epidemiology.

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