ScienceIQ.com

Medicine Facts

Fighting Viruses

Viral diseases can be very difficult to treat because viruses live inside the body's cells where they are protected from medicines in the blood stream. Researchers developed the first antiviral drug ... Continue reading

Electron micrograph of Ebola virus.

Your Friend, the Fat Cell

A healthy, adult human body contains about 35 billion fat cells. Each contains about 0.5 micrograms of fat. Stored fat is essential to good health. Fat is the body's principal energy reserve. It is ... Continue reading

Mature fat cells filled with fat.

Smallpox, Chickenpox . . . Monkeypox?

This past summer a few people in the midwest came down with monkeypox, a viral disease related to smallpox but less infectious and a lot less deadly to humans. Oddly they all seem to have caught the ... Continue reading

The Plague

Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The bacterium is found mainly in rodents, particularly rats, and in the fleas that feed on them. Other animals and humans ... Continue reading

Prairie dogs sometimes carry plague.