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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1977

Where did our infectious diseases come from? The evolution of infectious disease.

Infectious diseases have been evolving from the earliest days of life on earth. Major factors influencing their developments include the splitting of continents (continental drift), the radiation of early primates into present-day forms, migrations of man around the world, the ending of the Ice Age, the invention of agriculture, the domestication of animals, the increase in populations, and the urbanization of societies. The impact of such basic changes on infectious diseases is reviewed.

Agriculture↗
PubMed1978

Immunization against infectious disease.

Mortality and morbidity from infectious diseases in the United States have declined more than 90 percent since 1900. Factors believed to be responsible for this decline include changes in the natural history of disease, sanitation, quarantine measures, control of nonhuman vectors, antibacterial drugs, and immunization. The contributions of each of these factors differ among the various infectious diseases; except for smallpox and diphtheria control, immunization had little effect until after World War II. The success of present and future immunization programs is endangered by public and physician complacency and by complex legal and ethical problems related to informed consent and responsibility for rare, vaccine-related injury.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2026

CRISPR-Cas and Infectious Diseases: A Decade of Translational Advances in Molecular Biotechnology.

CRISPR-Cas systems have emerged as a versatile tool for diagnosing, treating, and preventing infectious diseases. This review highlights translational advancements in CRISPR-Cas-based applications, concentrating on the past decades in diagnostics, therapeutic genome editing, and vaccine development. The article highlights key platforms like DETECTR and SHERLOCK, which enable rapid, sensitive pathogen detection, and explores CRISPR-Cas9 systems in therapeutic strategies for directly targeting viral genomes and combating antimicrobial resistance. It also examines the role of CRISPR-Cas9 in engineering live-attenuated and personalized neoantigen vaccines. Principal findings demonstrate a clear progression from experimental proof-of-concept to preclinical applications primarily in CRISPR-based diagnostics and the engineering of live-attenuated vaccine candidates, whereas translation in CRISPR-based therapeutics and personalized neoantigen vaccines for infectious diseases remains at earlier, more exploratory stages. CRISPR-based diagnostics have progressed further toward clinical evaluation than therapeutics due to delivery and safety constraints, while personalized neoantigen vaccines are included mainly as an emerging, comparative concept for infectious diseases rather than a mature application. This review uniquely integrates CRISPR-based diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccine development within a single infectious disease framework, critically assesses their current maturity, and systematically highlights technical, regulatory, and ethical barriers alongside realistic future priorities. The review concludes that while CRISPR-Cas holds transformative potential for infectious disease management, significant challenges in delivery efficiency, off-target effects, and ethical regulation must be addressed to ensure safe and equitable clinical translation.

Humans↗
PubMed1979

Epidemics of infectious diseases in newborn nurseries.

The newborn nursery is a frequent site of epidemics of infectious disease. The unique susceptibility of neonates to colonization, their intimate exposure to hospital personnel, and their frquent contact with possibly contaminated inanimate objects are major factors contributing to the risk of nursery epidemics. Most of the epidemics described have been caused by bacteria; the role of viruses in nosocomial infections is not well defined but is undoubtedly greater than presently appreciated. All bacteria implicated in nursery epidemics have the capacity to survive or even multiply in the environment or on human skin or to cause gastrointestinal disease. Analysis of the etiologic bacteria, the epidemiology of outbreaks studied, and extensive clinical research indicate that bacterial transmission in this setting occurs primarily by manual contact and very infrequently by the respiratory route. The cornerstone of a program to prevent infectious diseases in the nursery consists of active, disease-oriented surveillance by specially trained personnel; microbiologic surveillance is important only when specifically indicated. Practical technical considerations for prevention of infectious diseases in nurseries are available. Programs to eradicate an ongoing epidemic must be individualized.

Cross Infection↗
PubMed1979

Epidemics of non-infectious disease.

Epidemics of non-infectious disease are often caused by exposure to industrial products, intermediates or by-products, either in the work-place or as a result of the contamination of a wider environment. Although the prime objective of research must be the recognition of the hazard and the evaluation of its magnitude so that illness may be prevented, close collaboration of clinicians, epidemiologists and toxicologists should lead to the acquisition of much knowledge of the mechanisms by which disease is caused. Catastrophes, though always regrettable, must be seen as experiments demanding careful analysis and exploitation. Many examples of different types of problem will be selected from the numerous epidemics from the time of the Schneeberg and Joachimsthal miners to the recent concern with contamination of the environs of Seveso by dioxin.

Asbestos↗
PubMed1978

[Recent developments in the field of infectious diseases].

A résumé is presented of recent developments in the field of infectious diseases of particular interest of practising physicians. Examples are given to illustrate recent discoveries concerning the frequent misuse of antibiotics, the problem of infections developing in hospitalized patients, the biology of microbial infection, the etiology of well-known illnesses, new infectious diseases, and the development of vaccines. It is evident that the rate at which new and important information is evident that the rate at which new and important information is being reported demands particular effort in medical school teaching to ensure that students learn how to acquire and evaluate new information as well as how to discard ideas which are no longer valid.

Anti-Bacterial Agents↗
PubMed2025

Incorporating Epidemiological Data into the Genomic Analysis of Partially Sampled Infectious Disease Outbreaks.

Pathogen genomic data are increasingly being used to investigate transmission dynamics in infectious disease outbreaks. Combining genomic data with epidemiological data should substantially increase our understanding of outbreaks, but this is highly challenging when the outbreak under study is only partially sampled, so that both genomic and epidemiological data are missing for intermediate links in the transmission chains. Here, we present a new dynamic programming algorithm to perform this task efficiently. We implement this methodology into the well-established TransPhylo framework to reconstruct partially sampled outbreaks using a combination of genomic and epidemiological data. We use simulated datasets to show that including epidemiological data can improve the accuracy of the inferred transmission links compared with inference based on genomic data only. This also allows us to estimate parameters specific to the epidemiological data (such as transmission rates between particular groups), which would otherwise not be possible. We then apply these methods to two real-world examples. First, we use genomic data from an outbreak of tuberculosis in Argentina, for which data was also available on the HIV status of sampled individuals, in order to investigate the role of HIV coinfection in the spread of this tuberculosis outbreak. Second, we use genomic and geographical data from the 2003 epidemic of avian influenza H7N7 in the Netherlands to reconstruct its spatial epidemiology. In both cases, we show that incorporating epidemiological data into the genomic analysis allows us to investigate the role of epidemiological properties in the spread of infectious diseases.

Humans↗
PubMed1978

The City Hospital for Infectious Diseases--conception and first years.

Cape Town had no proper facilities for dealing with infectious disease when, in 1894, Dr Barney Fuller, city MOH, began a 6-year flight to establish the City Hospital for Infectious Diseases. The project was delayed, first by disputes between the city and the Colonial Government about paying for it, and then by the outbreak of the South African War. As a result, the hospital when built in 1900 was taken over by the military, and was only developed for its proper purpose by Dr Jasper Anderson in 1902.

Communicable Diseases↗
PubMed2026

Challenges and future directions in AI-driven biomaterials for microbiome-associated oral infectious diseases: A systematic review.

Oral biofilm-induced antimicrobial resistance is the core pathogenic mechanism of microbiome-associated oral infectious diseases (dental caries, periodontitis, peri-implantitis, and endodontic infection). Traditional therapies and biomaterials are limited by poor biofilm penetration, drug resistance induction, single functionality, and inadequate adaptation to dynamic oral microenvironmental changes (e.g., pH fluctuations, salivary rinsing, masticatory stimulation). Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the field by integrating materials science, microbiology, and stomatology data. Via machine learning, deep learning, and multi-physics simulation, AI optimizes biomaterial physicochemical properties, decodes microenvironmental signals, constructs precise sensing-response loops, and supports the full chain of material design, performance prediction, and action simulation, advancing treatment from empirical intervention to precision regulation. This systematic review retrieved literature from PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science (January 2016-January 2026) using keywords across three dimensions: AI, biomaterials, and oral microbiome. Following inclusion/exclusion criteria, 99 articles were included. It elaborates on five core mechanisms of AI-driven oral biomaterials (precise oral microbiome analysis, targeted material design/optimization, performance prediction/simulation, targeted delivery/intervention, effect evaluation/dynamic regulation), analyzes their applications in microbiome-targeted biomaterial research and development (R&D) and clinical practice for the four major oral infectious diseases, addresses technical bottlenecks (insufficient targeting specificity and precision of biomaterials, poor stability and durability in complex oral microenvironments, inadequate biofilm disruption capacity, and clinical translation obstacles), and proposes future directions (multimodal design to enhance targeting specificity, structural and component optimization to improve stability/durability, development of multi-mechanism synergistic biofilm disruption strategies, strengthening translational research for clinical application, and deep integration of AI in the full chain of biomaterial R&D). This work provides comprehensive theoretical and practical support for the R&D, optimization, and clinical translation of AI-driven microbiome-targeted oral biomaterials.

Humans↗
PubMed1975

Infectious diseases in primitive societies.

Incidence of various infectious diseases in several Amazon Indian tribes has been determined serologically. Diseases that infect only man fall into two distinct categories. Those which can persist in an individual for a prolonged period are highly endemic, but those which are infectious only in the acute phase die out quickly after introduction. The suggestion is made that the latter diseases could not perpetuate themselves before the advent of advanced cultures and did not exert selective pressures on the human genetic constitution until relatively recently.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2026

From spillover to systems: evidence gaps in One Health preparedness for emerging infectious diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Latin America and the Caribbean are a global hotspot for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, yet regional One Health preparedness remains uneven and incompletely operationalized. This narrative Mini Review synthesizes evidence published mainly between 2015 and 2026 on One Health preparedness for emerging infectious diseases in the region, emphasizing how environmental disruption and climate change shape zoonotic and vector-borne spillover risk. Available regional surveys suggest broad professional familiarity with the One Health concept but limited operational implementation, with environmental health frequently identified as the least-integrated domain. We argue that spillover risk-and the failure to detect and contain spillover once it occurs-should be understood as a system-level outcome shaped by ecological disruption, socioeconomic vulnerability, surveillance capacity, and governance, rather than as an isolated biological event: deforestation, agricultural and extractive expansion-including illegal mining and logging-unplanned urbanization, and climate variability generate new human-animal-vector interfaces, while fragmented governance, uneven and poorly decentralized laboratory capacity, and limited reservoir and environmental surveillance leave these interfaces unmonitored. Environmental and climatic drivers are robustly linked to spillover, although the pathways are disease-specific rather than universal, and socioeconomic vulnerability concentrates the resulting burden in Indigenous, rural, and marginalized populations. We identify priority gaps in integrated surveillance, decentralized diagnostics, genomic capacity, reservoir ecology, governance, financing, and equity, and propose an agenda for anticipatory, climate-informed, and context-sensitive preparedness.

Latin America↗