releases

Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers, in collaboration with investigators at Johns Hopkins University, are beginning a Phase I trial to test a new vaccine against the West Nile virus.

As the number of foreign-born health care workers in the United States has risen, so has the potential for transmitting tuberculosis in health-care settings.

The study that led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to change its recommendations for giving flu shots to children is published in the July 6 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are attempting to short circuit the progression of Parkinson's disease by implanting stimulation devices into the brains of Parkinson's patients earlier on in the course of their disease.

Every year, around the Fourth of July, experts at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt see fireworks-related injuries -- everything from burns and abrasions to serious eye damage, and even blindness. This year, doctors say, they hope parents will opt for a professional fireworks show rather than something in the back yard, put on by amateurs. National statistics show 10 percent of firework injuries are sustained by toddlers and injuries are most likely when children have fireworks without adequate supervision.

Sten H. Vermund, M.D., Ph.D., the director of The Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health and a Pediatric Infectious Disease research epidemiologist at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt has been selected as the primary investigator to lead the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) for the newly restructured HIV/AIDS clinical trials networks.

After treating five children for near-drowning in the last two weeks, Vanderbilt Children's Hospital experts are asking parents to review safety tips. Tom Abramo, M.D., director of the Emergency Department at Vanderbilt Children's, says most of the incidents have involved children under the age of 5.