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Viruses do more than make you sick. Read about the different uses for viruses.

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According to Accenture's survey of 1,000 consumers in England one-in-eight (13 per cent) have had their personal medical information stolen from technology systems. More than half (68 per cent) of English consumers said they want to have at least some involvement in keeping their healthcare data secured, whereas only a quarter (28 per cent) said that they have such involvement today.

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According to Accenture's survey of 1,000 consumers in England one-in-eight (13 per cent) have had their personal medical information stolen from technology systems. More than half (68 per cent) of English consumers said they want to have at least some involvement in keeping their healthcare data secured, whereas only a quarter (28 per cent) said that they have such involvement today.

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Read all about viruses - what are they, anyway?

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AIDS (short for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) A disease that weakens a body's immune system, greatly lowering resistance to infections and some cancers. It is caused by the HIV germ. (See also HIV)

antibiotic A germ-killing substance prescribed as a medicine (or sometimes as a feed additive to promote the growth of livestock). It does not work against viruses.

antibody Any of a large number of proteins that the body produces as part of its immune response. Antibodies neutralize, tag or destroy viruses, bacteria and other foreign substances in the blood.

antigen A substance capable of causing an immune reaction.

bacteriophage Also known simply as a phage. This is a type of virus that infects - and ultimately kills - bacteria, but not before reproducing and spreading.

bacterium (plural bacteria) A single-celled organism. These dwell nearly everywhere on Earth, from the bottom of the sea to inside animals.

cell The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Typically too small to see with the naked eye,it consists of watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall. Animals are made of anywhere from thousands to trillions of cells, depending on their size.

DNA (short for deoxyribonucleic acid) A long, double-stranded and spiral-shaped molecule inside most living cells that carries genetic instructions. In all living things, from plants and animals to microbes, these instructions tell cells which molecules to make.

Ebola A family of viruses that cause a deadly disease in people. All cases have originated in Africa. Its symptoms include headaches, fever, muscle pain and extensive bleeding. The infection spreads from person to person (or animal to some person) through contact with infected body fluids. The disease gets its name from where the infection was first discovered in 1976 - communities near the Ebola River in what was then known as Zaire (and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo).

gene (adj. genetic)A segment of DNA that codes, or holds instructions, for producing a protein. Offspring inherit genes from their parents. Genes influence how an organism looks and behaves.

genetic Having to do with chromosomes, DNA and the genes contained within DNA. The field of science dealing with these biological instructions is known as genetics. People who work in this field are geneticists.

germ Any one-celled microorganism, such as a bacterium, fungal species or virus particle. Some germs cause disease. Others can promote the health of higher-order organisms, including birds and mammals. The health effects of most germs, however, remain unknown.

HIV (short for Human Immunodeficiency Virus) A potentially deadly virus that attacks cells in the body's immune system and causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS.

immune system The collection of cells and their responses that help the body fight off infections and deal with foreign substances that may provoke allergies.

immunity The ability of an organism to resist a particular infection or poison by producing and releasing special protective cells.

infection A disease that can spread from one organism to another.

influenza (or flu) A highly contagious viral infection of the respiratory passages causing fever and severe aching. It often occurs as an epidemic.

measles A highly contagious disease, typically striking children. Symptoms include a characteristic rash across the body, headaches, runny nose, and coughing. Some people also develop pinkeye, a swelling of the brain (which can cause brain damage) and pneumonia. Both of the latter two complications can lead to death. Fortunately, since the middle 1960s there has been a vaccine to dramatically cut the risk of infection.

molecule An electrically neutral group of atoms that represents the smallest possible amount of a chemical compound. Molecules can be made of single types of atoms or of different types. For example, the oxygen in the air is made of two oxygen atoms (O ₂), but water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom (H ₂ O).

proteins Compounds made from one or more long chains of amino acids. Proteins are an essential part of all living organisms. They form the basis of living cells, muscle and tissues; they also do the work inside of cells. The hemoglobin in blood and the antibodies that attempt to fight infections are among the better-known, stand-alone proteins.Medicines frequently work by latching onto proteins.

RNA A molecule that helps "read" the genetic information contained in DNA. A cell's molecular machinery reads DNA to create RNA, and then reads RNA to create proteins.

species A group of similar organisms capable of producing offspring that can survive and reproduce.

vaccine A biological mixture that resembles a disease-causing agent. It is given to help the body create immunity to a particular disease. The injections used to administer most vaccines are known as vaccinations.

vector (in medicine) An organism that can spread disease, such as by transmitting a germ from one host to another.

virus Tiny infectious particles consisting of RNA or DNA surrounded by protein. Viruses can reproduce only by injecting their genetic material into the cells of living creatures. Although scientists frequently refer to viruses as live or dead, in fact no virus is truly alive. It doesn't eat like animals do, or make its own food the way plants do. It must hijack the cellular machinery of a living cell in order to survive.

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AIDS (short for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) A disease that weakens a body's immune system, greatly lowering resistance to infections and some cancers. It is caused by the HIV germ. (See also HIV) antibiotic A germ-killing substance prescribed as a medicine (or sometimes as a feed additive to promote the growth of livestock).

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Watch out for mosquitoes...

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A political thriller about virus warfare.

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The Virus has 97 ratings and 25 reviews. Janey said: Loved this book! Very fast paced and believable. Janelle writes very well and it was so easy to imm...

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Improving the flu vaccine

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A new way of producing the seasonal flu vaccine could speed up the process and provide better protection against infection.

For decades, vaccine manufacturers have used chicken eggs to grow the flu virus strains included in the seasonal flu shot. But because these human strains frequently mutate to adapt to their new environment in eggs, the resulting vaccine is often an imperfect match to the actual virus that it is supposed to protect against.

Duke researchers have devised a way to keep the human influenza virus from mutating during production, generating a perfect match to the target vaccine in a shorter time frame. Their findings appear in the journal mBio.

"We have solved a fundamental problem that scientists had accepted would be part of vaccine production -- that the virus is always going to mutate if it is grown in eggs," said senior study author Nicholas S. Heaton, Ph.D., assistant professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke University School of Medicine. "This research could lead to a significantly cheaper and more efficacious vaccine."

The influenza vaccine has been notoriously ineffective. During the 2015-2016 flu season, the vaccine reduced the risk of catching a serious bout of the flu by just 42 percent, and that was considered a good year. Most of the time, the vaccine's lackluster performance is blamed on poor strain selection. The World Health Organization tracks which virus strains are circulating and decides which ones should go into the vaccine each year. Because they have to pick months in advance, and the virus is constantly evolving, they sometimes miss the mark.

Yet sometimes they pick the right strain, and still people who get the vaccine aren't adequately protected. A few years ago, scientists figured out why: the receptor that the virus uses to get into cells is shaped differently in a human nose than it is in a chicken egg. The human virus has to alter the key it carries with it -- a protein called hemagglutinin (HA) -- so that it can operate in its new locale. Because hemagglutinin also happens to be the part of the flu vaccine that induces an immune response in people (it's the H in a virus name like H5N1), each mutation renders the vaccine less effective.

Heaton and his team attempted to engineer a virus that would both grow happily in chicken eggs and produce the HA protein required to protect people. They expressed two versions of hemagglutinin -- one adapted to eggs and one adapted to humans -- on one virus particle.

"We reasoned that the egg-adapted HA would do all the heavy lifting," Heaton said. "It could do the virus entry work and just bring the other (human) one along for the ride. In effect, that would alleviate the strong selective pressure on the human HA to mutate."

Heaton and his colleagues constructed this "bivalent," or two-strain, virus and grew it in chicken cells. They showed that it packaged twice as much protein as a "monovalent" virus that carries just one HA. When they vaccinated mice with either the bivalent or monovalent vaccine (both with genetically identical human HA proteins), they found equal immune responses across the board.

Next, the researchers wanted to see if their technology could tackle some of the worst-growing vaccine strains in history. In 2002, the Fujian strain grew so poorly in production that, although it was the major circulating strain that the time, it could not be included in the vaccine. As a result, nobody was vaccinated against Fujian that year, and vaccine efficacy was very poor.

Heaton and his team plugged the HA from that infamous Fujian strain into their egg-adapted system and rescued the virus right off the bat. When the two HA proteins were put together, it grew five orders of magnitude more virus.

After the researchers had grown the virus in chicken eggs for a while, they harvested the virus and sequenced the human HA protein. They did not find a single mutation.

"Because viruses typically mutate during vaccine production, manufacturers have to screen for mutations, and decide which ones can be tolerated and which ones can't," Heaton said. "If we can eliminate mutations, we can cut back dramatically on production time."

Though the technology is still in its infancy, the researchers have successfully used it to make bivalent viruses with a half dozen different HA molecules. Currently, they are making their own versions of the vaccines that are under production for the 2017 and 2018 flu seasons, and are planning to test how they differ in terms of growth, genetic stability, and actual protection.

"There's a laundry list of problems with the flu vaccine, but this is something that we can solve now, not 10 or 15 years down the line," said Heaton. "We're not proposing to change any kind of vaccine production or vaccine methods. We're just proposing to start production with a different virus. It could be a relatively simple fix."

The research was supported in part by the Duke School of Medicine Whitehead Scholarship and the National Institutes of Health (T32-GM007184-41 and T32-CA009111).

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influenza; bird flu; cold and flu; vaccines; viruses; herpes; infectious diseases; mumps

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New vaccine production could improve flu shot accuracy: Influenza virus prevented from adapting to chicken egg host

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For decades, vaccine manufacturers have used chicken eggs to grow the flu virus strains included in the seasonal vaccine. But because these human strains frequently mutate to adapt to their new environment, the resulting vaccine is often an imperfect match to the virus that it is supposed to protect against.

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A book of essays that explore the hidden world of viruses

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Viruses are the smallest living things known to science, yet they hold the entire planet in their sway. We are most familiar with the vir...