scholarly journals Human infectious disease burdens decrease with urbanization but not with biodiversity

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1722) ◽  
pp. 20160122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chelsea L. Wood ◽  
Alex McInturff ◽  
Hillary S. Young ◽  
DoHyung Kim ◽  
Kevin D. Lafferty
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Dilution Effect ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Life Years ◽  
Over Time

Infectious disease burdens vary from country to country and year to year due to ecological and economic drivers. Recently, Murray et al. (Murray CJ et al . 2012 Lancet 380 , 2197–2223. ( doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61689-4 )) estimated country-level morbidity and mortality associated with a variety of factors, including infectious diseases, for the years 1990 and 2010. Unlike other databases that report disease prevalence or count outbreaks per country, Murray et al. report health impacts in per-person disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), allowing comparison across diseases with lethal and sublethal health effects. We investigated the spatial and temporal relationships between DALYs lost to infectious disease and potential demographic, economic, environmental and biotic drivers, for the 60 intermediate-sized countries where data were available and comparable. Most drivers had unique associations with each disease. For example, temperature was positively associated with some diseases and negatively associated with others, perhaps due to differences in disease agent thermal optima, transmission modes and host species identities. Biodiverse countries tended to have high disease burdens, consistent with the expectation that high diversity of potential hosts should support high disease transmission. Contrary to the dilution effect hypothesis, increases in biodiversity over time were not correlated with improvements in human health, and increases in forestation over time were actually associated with increased disease burden. Urbanization and wealth were associated with lower burdens for many diseases, a pattern that could arise from increased access to sanitation and healthcare in cities and increased investment in healthcare. The importance of urbanization and wealth helps to explain why most infectious diseases have become less burdensome over the past three decades, and points to possible levers for further progress in improving global public health. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Conservation, biodiversity and infectious disease: scientific evidence and policy implications’.

scholarly journals Analysis of research intensity on infectious disease by disease burden reveals which infectious diseases are neglected by researchers

2018 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 478-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuki Furuse
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Burden ◽  
Neglected Tropical Diseases ◽  
Research Activity ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Life Years ◽  
Considerable Morbidity ◽  
Immunodeficiency Syndrome ◽  
Research Intensity

Infectious diseases are associated with considerable morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although human, financial, substantial, and time resources are limited, it is unknown whether such resources are used effectively in research to manage diseases. The correlation between the disability-adjusted life years to represent disease burden and number of publications as a surrogate for research activity was investigated to measure burden-adjusted research intensity for 52 infectious diseases at global and country levels. There was significantly low research intensity for paratyphoid fever and high intensity for influenza, HIV/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis considering their disease burden. We identified the infectious diseases that have received the most attention from researchers and those that have been relatively disregarded. Interestingly, not all so-called neglected tropical diseases were subject to low burden-adjusted research intensity. Analysis of the intensity of infectious disease research at a country level revealed characteristic patterns. These findings provided a basis for further discussion of the more appropriate allocation of resources for research into infectious diseases.

scholarly journals What is Communicable? Unaccounted Injuries and “Catching” Diabetes in an Illegible Epidemic

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Moran-Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Communicable Disease ◽  
Treatment Access ◽  
Infectious Disease Transmission ◽  
The World ◽  
Historically Situated ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Non Communicable Disease

Long-accepted models of causality cast diseases into the binary of either “contagious” or “non-communicable,” typically with institutional resources focused primarily on interrupting infectious disease transmission. But in southern Belize, as in much of the world today, epidemic diabetes has become a leading cause of death and a notorious contributor to organ failure and amputated limbs. This ethnographic essay follows caregivers’ and families’ work to survive in-between public health categories, and asks what responses a bifurcated model of infectious versus non-communicable disease structures or incapacitates in practice. It proposes an alternative focus on diabetes as a “para-communicable” condition—materially transmitted as bodies and ecologies intimately shape each other over time, with unequal and compounding effects for historically situated groups of people. The article closes by querying how communicability relates to community, and why it matters to reframe narratives about contributing causalities in relation to struggles for treatment access.

scholarly journals Conservation, development and the management of infectious disease: avian influenza in China, 2004–2012

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1722) ◽  
pp. 20160126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tong Wu ◽  
Charles Perrings
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Risk Factors ◽  
Avian Influenza ◽  
Wildlife Conservation ◽  
Disease Risk ◽  
Risk Mitigation ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Migratory Bird ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Economic Risk

There is growing evidence that wildlife conservation measures have mixed effects on the emergence and spread of zoonotic disease. Wildlife conservation has been found to have both positive (dilution) and negative (contagion) effects. In the case of avian influenza H5N1 in China, the focus has been on negative effects. Lakes and wetlands attracting migrating waterfowl have been argued to be disease hotspots. We consider the implications of waterfowl conservation for H5N1 infections in both poultry and humans between 2004 and 2012. We model both environmental and economic risk factors. Environmental risk factors comprise the conditions that structure interaction between wild and domesticated birds. Economic risk factors comprise the cost of disease, biosecurity measures and disease risk mitigation. We find that H5N1 outbreaks in poultry populations are indeed sensitive to the existence of wild-domesticated bird mixing zones, but not in the way we would expect from the literature. We find that risk is decreasing in protected migratory bird habitat. Since the number of human cases is increasing in the number of poultry outbreaks, as expected, the implication is that the protection of wetlands important for migratory birds offers unexpected human health benefits. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Conservation, biodiversity and infectious disease: scientific evidence and policy implications’.

scholarly journals Leveraging pathogen community distributions to understand outbreak and emergence potential

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tad A. Dallas ◽  
Colin J. Carlson ◽  
Timothée Poisot
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Influenza Pandemic ◽  
Ecological Perspective ◽  
Disease Forecasting ◽  
Predictive Capacity ◽  
Stochastic Nature ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Vector Borne ◽  
Events Data ◽  
Over Time

ABSTRACTUnderstanding pathogen outbreak and emergence events has important implications to the management of infectious disease. Apart from preempting infectious disease events, there is considerable interest in determining why certain pathogens are consistently found in some regions, and why others spontaneously emerge or reemerge over time. Here, we use a trait-free approach which leverages information on the global community of human infectious diseases to estimate the potential for pathogen outbreak, emergence, and re-emergence events over time. Our approach uses pairwise dissimilarities among pathogen distributions between countries and country-level pathogen composition to quantify pathogen outbreak, emergence, and re-emergence potential as a function of time (e.g., number of years between training and prediction), pathogen type (e.g., virus), and transmission mode (e.g., vector-borne). We find that while outbreak and re-emergence potential are well captured by our simple model, prediction of emergence events remains elusive, and sudden global emergences like an influenza pandemic seem beyond the predictive capacity of the model. While our approach allows for dynamic predictability of outbreak and re-emergence events, data deficiencies and the stochastic nature of emergence events may preclude accurate prediction. Together, our results make a compelling case for incorporating a community ecological perspective into existing disease forecasting efforts.

scholarly journals Searching for the Source of Infection: A Website to Help Teach the Principles of Infectious Disease

2020 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-42
Author(s):  
Jie Shen ◽  
Zhu Xiang ◽  
Yang Peijing ◽  
Zhou Zixuan
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Exchange Process ◽  
Multiple Infection ◽  
Major Threat ◽  
Source Of Infection ◽  
Sources Of Infection ◽  
Test Use

Infectious diseases are a major threat to humans, and finding sources of infection is therefore an important task. We designed a website to help teachers communicate the relevant principles of infectious diseases, deepen students' understanding of disease transmission, and equip students with the ability to trace the origin of infections caused by microorganisms. The website enables multi-person online use, with real-time recording of the exchange process and real-time viewing of infection results. Additionally, the website is able to preserve data permanently by setting multiple infection sources, providing a better simulation of real-world scenarios. Test use of the website by 120 students demonstrated that it has no significant bugs.

scholarly journals Null expectations for disease dynamics in shrinking habitat: dilution or amplification?

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1722) ◽  
pp. 20160173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina L. Faust ◽  
Andrew P. Dobson ◽  
Nicole Gottdenker ◽  
Laura S. P. Bloomfield ◽  
Hamish I. McCallum ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Habitat Loss ◽  
Disease Risk ◽  
Dilution Effect ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Pathogen Transmission ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Infection Prevalence ◽  
Density Dependent ◽  
Host Competence

As biodiversity declines with anthropogenic land-use change, it is increasingly important to understand how changing biodiversity affects infectious disease risk. The dilution effect hypothesis, which points to decreases in biodiversity as critical to an increase in infection risk, has received considerable attention due to the allure of a win–win scenario for conservation and human well-being. Yet some empirical data suggest that the dilution effect is not a generalizable phenomenon. We explore the response of pathogen transmission dynamics to changes in biodiversity that are driven by habitat loss using an allometrically scaled multi-host model. With this model, we show that declining habitat, and thus declining biodiversity, can lead to either increasing or decreasing infectious-disease risk, measured as endemic prevalence. Whether larger habitats, and thus greater biodiversity, lead to a decrease (dilution effect) or increase (amplification effect) in infection prevalence depends upon the pathogen transmission mode and how host competence scales with body size. Dilution effects were detected for most frequency-transmitted pathogens and amplification effects were detected for density-dependent pathogens. Amplification effects were also observed over a particular range of habitat loss in frequency-dependent pathogens when we assumed that host competence was greatest in large-bodied species. By contrast, only amplification effects were observed for density-dependent pathogens; host competency only affected the magnitude of the effect. These models can be used to guide future empirical studies of biodiversity–disease relationships across gradients of habitat loss. The type of transmission, the relationship between host competence and community assembly, the identity of hosts contributing to transmission, and how transmission scales with area are essential factors to consider when elucidating the mechanisms driving disease risk in shrinking habitat. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Conservation, biodiversity and infectious disease: scientific evidence and policy implications'.

scholarly journals Impact of Social Distancing on COVID-19 and Other Related Infectious Disease Transmission: A Systematic Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (F) ◽  
pp. 601-607
Author(s):  
Nor Rumaizah Mohd Nordin ◽  
Fadly Syah Arsad ◽  
Puteri Sofia Nadira Megat Kamaruddin ◽  
Muhammad Hilmi ◽  
Mohd Faizal Madrim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Infectious Disease Transmission ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
The Impact

Background   Similar to other coronaviruses, COVID-19 is transmitted mainly by droplets and is highly transmissible through close proximity or physical contact with an infected person. Countries across the globe have implemented public health control measures to prevent onwards transmission and reduce burden on health care settings. Social or physical distancing was found to be one of appropriate measure based on previous experience with epidemic and pandemic contagious diseases. This study aims to review the latest evidence of the impact of social or physical distancing implemented during COVID-19 pandemic towards COVID-19 and other related infectious disease transmission.   Methodology   The study uses PRISMA review protocol and formulation of research question was based on PICO. The selected databases include Ovid MEDLINE and Scopus. Thorough identification, screening and eligibility process were done, revealed selected 8 articles. The articles then ranked in quality through MMAT.   Results   A total of eight papers included in this analysis. Five studies (USA, Canada, South Korea and the United Kingdom) showed physical distancing had resulted in a reduction in Covid-19 transmission. In comparison, three other studies (Australia, South Korea and Finland) showed a similar decline on other infectious diseases (Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), other sexually transmitted infections (STI), Influenza, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and Vaccine-Preventive Disease (VPD). The degree of the distancing policy implemented differ between strict and lenient, with both result in effectiveness in reducing transmission of infectious disease.   Conclusion   Physical or social distancing may come in the form of extreme or lenient measure in effectively containing contagious disease like COVID-19, however the stricter the measure will give more proportionate impact towards the economy, education, mental health issues, morbidity and mortality of non-COVID-19 diseases. Since we need this measure to ensure the reduction of infectious diseases transmission in order to help flattening the curve which allow much needed time for healthcare system to prepare adequately to response, ‘Precision physical distancing” can be implemented which will have more benefit towards the survival of the community as a whole.

scholarly journals Influence of Climatic Factors on Human Hantavirus Infections in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Systematic Review

Pathogens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Kirk Osmond Douglas ◽  
Karl Payne ◽  
Gilberto Sabino-Santos ◽  
John Agard
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Climatic Factors ◽  
Habitat Type ◽  
Inclusion Criteria ◽  
The Caribbean

Background: With the current climate change crisis and its influence on infectious disease transmission there is an increased desire to understand its impact on infectious diseases globally. Hantaviruses are found worldwide, causing infectious diseases such as haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) and hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS)/hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) in tropical regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). These regions are inherently vulnerable to climate change impacts, infectious disease outbreaks and natural disasters. Hantaviruses are zoonotic viruses present in multiple rodent hosts resident in Neotropical ecosystems within LAC and are involved in hantavirus transmission. Methods: We conducted a systematic review to assess the association of climatic factors with human hantavirus infections in the LAC region. Literature searches were conducted on MEDLINE and Web of Science databases for published studies according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) criteria. The inclusion criteria included at least eight human hantavirus cases, at least one climatic factor and study from > 1 LAC geographical location. Results: In total, 383 papers were identified within the search criteria, but 13 studies met the inclusion criteria ranging from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Panama in Latin America and a single study from Barbados in the Caribbean. Multiple mathematical models were utilized in the selected studies with varying power to generate robust risk and case estimates of human hantavirus infections linked to climatic factors. Strong evidence of hantavirus disease association with precipitation and habitat type factors were observed, but mixed evidence was observed for temperature and humidity. Conclusions: The interaction of climate and hantavirus diseases in LAC is likely complex due to the unknown identity of all vertebrate host reservoirs, circulation of multiple hantavirus strains, agricultural practices, climatic changes and challenged public health systems. There is an increasing need for more detailed systematic research on the influence of climate and other co-related social, abiotic, and biotic factors on infectious diseases in LAC to understand the complexity of vector-borne disease transmission in the Neotropics.

scholarly journals Preparations for the European football championship (EURO 2008) in Switzerland

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
Author(s):  
A Dreyfus ◽  
J Marfurt ◽  
A Birrer ◽  
H. C. Matter ◽  
P-A Raeber
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Infectious Disease ◽  
Disease Prevention ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
National Level ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Mass Gathering ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
European Football

The European football championship (EURO 2008) is taking place in Austria and Switzerland between 7 and 29 June 2008. From a public health point of view, such a mass gathering requires attention with regard to infectious disease prevention because of (i) a potential increased risk for disease transmission (ii) increased media attention and (iii) its potential as a target for actions of a bioterrorist nature [2,6,8,9]. This article gives an overview of the preparations for Euro 2008 on the national level in Switzerland with regards to infectious diseases.

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