Infectious Diseases

Smoking will become the single largest cause of death and disability in the world within the next 25 years, according to the first comprehensive, global study of how people die.Noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes -- often thought to strike primarily the affluent -- already cause more deaths in the developing world than infectious diseases, the five-year study showed.The study, done by a team headquartered at the Harvard University School of Public Health and released yesterday, found that depression, also associated with affluence, accounts for 10 percent of productive years lost throughout the world.

Drawing on lessons from the anthrax mailings of 2001, the federal government is organizing a national network of laboratories and experts on the chemical fingerprints of deadly germs to swiftly trace the source of future bioterrorist attacks. The core of the network will be at Fort Detrick in Frederick, where a National Bioforensics Analysis Center will maintain databases of viruses, bacteria and other pathogens for comparison with microbes used in crimes. Fort Detrick houses the chief military biodefense research center, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

In a first-ever analysis, 25 percent of all teenage girls in the U.S. and nearly half of African-American girls ages 14 to 19 were found to have a sexually transmitted disease. Those alarming rates suggest that admonitions to teenagers about safe sex are falling on deaf ears and that when it comes to infectious diseases, a lot more effort must be put into education, screening and prevention. Some experts familiar with high levels of sexual activity among teenagers as well as young women's greater vulnerability to STDs weren't surprised by the results.

Merrill J. Snyder, a retired University of Maryland microbiologist and former deputy director of the division of infectious diseases at its medical school, died of cancer Wednesday at Sinai Hospital. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 86. Born in McKeesport, Pa., he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh. He served in the Army during World War II and was assigned to Walter Reed Army Hospital where he studied rickettsial diseases, such as typhus.

When Mary Patricia Sullivan returned with her three daughters to Maryland in 2003 after spending seven years researching HIV/AIDS in Uganda, she was intent on giving them the best American school experience possible, friends said. After researching several school systems, Ms. Sullivan moved her family into a two-story house with light purple shutters on York Road in Hereford to take advantage of the schools in northern Baltimore County, they said. Ms.

WASHINGTON -- The National Institutes of Health announced yesterday that it was ready to begin tests of AIDS vaccines in people at high risk to get the disease.The trials will take place at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Immunization in Baltimore, the St. Louis University School of Medicine, the University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center, Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, and the University of Washington in Seattle.The experiment will be on a small scale, with two vaccines being given to 320 patients at the five sites.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton will soon propose a $25 million initiative to combat the spread of infectious diseases, including virulent new strains of microbes that resist treatment by antibiotics and other drugs, administration officials said yesterday.Public health officials have become alarmed about the emergence of such "superbugs" and more generally about the increasing incidence of infectious diseases once thought to be under control.The extra money will be included in the budget request that Clinton sends to Congress early next year, administration officials said.

ABC's 'This Week' Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. 9 a.m.:WMDT (Channel 47), 10 a.m.: WJLA (Channel 7), 10:30 a.m.: WMAR (Channel 2) CBS' 'Face the Nation' Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.; Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. 10:30 a.m.:WUSA (Channel 9) and WJZ (Channel 13) CNN's 'State of the Union' Giuliani; White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H.; Gov. Brian Schweitzer, D-Mont.

Dr. Stephen C. Schimpff, retired chief executive of the University of Maryland Medical Center, will discuss the effects of rapid advances in science and technology on the nature of health care in the future. The Columbia resident, who continues to teach in the fields of oncology and infectious diseases and to practice, will speak at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the central library, 10375 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. Copies of his book, The Future of Medicine: Megatrends in Health Care That Will Improve Your Quality of Life, will be available for purchase and signing.

The mesmerizing sharks on display in several exhibits at the National Aquarium in Baltimore are their own best advertisement for conservation: sand tiger sharks (collected off the coast of Lewes, Del.), nurse sharks, blacktop reef sharks, sandbar sharks, bonnethead sharks, smooth dogfish, whitetip reef sharks, a horn shark and a swell shark.Around the world, more than 370 species of sharks have been counted in all colors, shapes and sizes.Contrary to popular belief, sharks have astounding senses, including a sixth for detecting the bioelectric fields radiated by other sea creatures.