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Hepatitis E is endemic in many countries throughout the developing world, in particular on the continents of Africa and Asia. The disease generally affects young adults and has a very high mortality rate, up to 20%, in pregnant women. This invention relates to the identification of a neutralization site of hepatitis E virus (HEV) and neutralizing antibodies that react with it. The neutralization site is located on a polypeptide from the ORF2 gene (capsid gene) of HEV.

Hearing loss is a common communication disorder affecting nearly 1 in 1,000 children in the United States alone, and nearly 50% of adults by the age of eighty. Hearing loss can be caused by environmental and disease-related factors; however, hearing loss due to genetic factors accounts for approximately 50% of cases.

This invention claims antibodies and/or fragments thereof specific for hepatitis A virus (HAV) and the use of the antibodies in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of hepatitis A. Hepatitis A is the most common type of hepatitis reported in the United States, which reports an estimated 134,000 cases annually, and infects at least 1.4 million people worldwide each year. HAV is a positive sense RNA virus that is transmitted via the fecal-oral route, mainly through contaminated water supplies and food sources.

This invention describes a method for vaccination against Ebola virus. Outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever caused by the Ebola virus, particularly the Zaire subtype, are associated with high mortality rates. The virus is very contagious, and during an outbreak, presents a threat to anybody who comes into contact with an infected person. Because the virus progresses so rapidly and the mortality rate is so high, there is little opportunity to develop natural immunity, making vaccination a promising intervention.

Leishmania parasites are transmitted to their vertebrate hosts by infected phlebotomine sand fly bites. Sand fly saliva is known to enhance Leishmania infection, while immunity to the saliva protects against infection. This invention claims nine major salivary proteins from the sand fly vector of Leishmania major, Phlebotomus papatasi, nucleic acids encoding the proteins, vaccines comprising the proteins and/or nucleic acids, and methods of producing an immune response to prevent Leshmaniasis.

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) is being developed for gene therapy applications. This virus type presents several advantages over alternate vectors for therapeutic gene delivery. AAV is not considered pathogenic and transduces stably dividing and non-dividing cells. AAV also shows good serotype specificity to various cell types for targeted gene delivery.

Through injury or diseases, human or animal lungs may become too weak to sustain a sufficient flow of oxygen to the body and to remove adequate amounts of expired carbon dioxide. The present invention is a tracheal tube ventilation apparatus which efficiently rids patients of expired gases and promotes healthier breathing. This is accomplished by creating one or more leak holes in the wall of the endotracheal tube above the larynx, such as in the back of the mouth (i.e., oropharynx), so that expired gases can leak out of the endotracheal tube.

West Nile virus (WNV) has recently emerged in the U.S. and is considered a significant emerging disease that has embedded itself over a considerable region of the U.S. WNV infections have been recorded in humans as well as in different animals. From 1999-2014, WNV killed 1,765 people in the U.S. and caused severe disease in more than 41,762 others. This project is part of NIAID's comprehensive emerging infectious disease program.

The invention is a method for improving image quality in MR imaging methods using the SENSE (SENSitivity Encoding) method, which is known to have degraded image quality due to numerical ill-conditioning (so called g-factor loss). The invention improves the numerical conditioning by means of an adaptive regularization (matrix conditioning), thereby improving image quality for a given scan time. This is accomplished by adaptively adjusting the regularization parameter for each pixel position to achieve a target ghost artifact suppression.

The present invention discloses a method of enhancing progenitor cell differentiation, including enhancing myogenesis, neurogenesis and hematopoiesis, by contacting a progenitor cell with an effective amount of a deacetylase inhibitor (DI). The progenitor cell can be part of cell culture, such as a cell culture used for in vitro or in vivo analysis of progenitor cell differentiation, or can be part of an organism, such as a human or other mammal.