scholarly journals When does contacting more people lessen the transmission of infectious diseases?

Author(s):  
Bernardo A Mello

A primary concern in epidemics is to minimize the probability of contagion, often resorting to reducing the number of contacted people. However, the success of that strategy depends on the shape of the dose-response curve, which relates the response of the exposed person to the pathogen dose received from surrounding infected people. If the reduction is achieved by spending more time with each contacted person, the pathogen charge received from each infected individual will be larger. The extended time spent close to each person may worsen the expected response if the dose-response curve is concave for small doses. This is the case when the expected response is negligible below a certain dose threshold and rises sharply above it. This paper proposes a mathematical model to calculate the expected response and uses it to identify the conditions when it would be advisable to reduce the contact time with each individual even at the cost of increasing the number of contacted people.

1960 ◽  
Vol 199 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Kátó ◽  
B. Gözsy

The severity and time of edema formation is characteristically influenced by doses of dextran if injected intravenously into rats. The dose-response curve revealed that small doses of dextrans (0.1–0.8 mg/100 gm) provoke maximal edema formation within 10 minutes, while increasing doses produce less severe edema and delay in its appearance, until a critical dose is arrived at, which provokes no hyperemia and no edema at all. Further increase in dose provokes edema again. The critical dose is relatively sharp and characteristic for each type of dextrans. If antihistamines are injected simultaneously with the critical dose, edema appears with full intensity. Experiments suggest that dextrans contain two fractions with opposite effects, one which provokes the edema formation and another which inhibits the response.


1972 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. B. Elder ◽  
G. Gillespie ◽  
E. H. G. Campbell ◽  
I. E. Gillespie ◽  
G. P. Crean ◽  
...  

1. The acid secretory responses to insulin of forty-seven duodenal ulcer patients after truncal vagotomy and drainage were classified according to the criteria of Hollander (1946) into positive or negative. 2. The acid response to ranges of small doses of pentagastrin was studied in these two groups. In the group with a positive acid response after insulin the dose-response pattern to pentagastrin was very similar to that in preoperative patients. 3. In those who failed to satisfy criteria for a positive response after insulin the dose-response curve to pentagastrin appeared to shift to the right. It had a lower level and a smaller slope. Truncal vagotomy appeared to cause an eightfold increase in the threshold dose found in preoperative patients. 4. Supersensitivity of the stomach to small doses of pentagastrin after vagotomy was not apparent in the present study.


1963 ◽  
Vol 117 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald L. Bornstein ◽  
Carl Bredenberg ◽  
W. Barry Wood

Although the absolute febrile responses of trained individual rabbits injected intravenously with small to moderate doses of leucocytic pyrogen vary over an appreciable range, the relative responses of each rabbit to changes in dosage are satisfactorily reproducible. The quantitative dose-response relationship is characterized by a hyperthermic ceiling at which the intensity of the febrile reaction is relatively constant over a wide dosage range. Only at lower dose levels, where the dose-response curve is reasonably steep, is the magnitude of the fever produced proportional to the amount of pyrogen injected. When sufficiently large doses of LP are injected, the hyperthermic ceiling is exceeded. The fevers thus induced are biphasic in character and, in this way, resemble the usual response to bacterial endotoxin. Similar biphasic fevers result from continuous infusions of relatively low concentrations of LP at a constant rate. Repeated intermittent injections of moderate doses of LP likewise cause prolonged biphasic fevers, but, once the fever has become established, the reaction to each individual injection becomes markedly depressed. When large doses of LP are injected at daily intervals, the characteristic biphasic response occurs only following the first injection. Thereafter a state of tolerance intervenes in which the late secondary rise in temperature fails to occur. This form of tolerance lasts as long as the daily injections are continued but subsides within a few days after the injections are stopped. During the transient tolerance the rabbit's responsiveness to small doses of LP (in the sensitive range of the dose response curve) is depressed. In addition, the amount of endogenous pyrogen mobilized from the tissues by a large dose of LP is not as great as that generated in a normal rabbit. The relations of these findings to biphasic fevers, tolerance, and the accuracy of the conventional method of pyrogen assay are briefly discussed.


1967 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 619-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Jacob Koed ◽  
Christian Hamburger

ABSTRACT Comparison of the dose-response curves for LH of ovine origin (NIH-LH-S8) and of human origin (IRP-HMG-2) using the OAAD test showed a small, though statistically significant difference, the dose-response curve for LH of human origin being a little flatter. Two standard curves for ovine LH obtained with 14 months' interval, were parallel but at different levels of ovarian ascorbic acid. When the mean ascorbic acid depletions were calculated as percentages of the control levels, the two curves for NIH-LH-S8 were identical. The use of standards of human origin in the OAAD test for LH activity of human preparations is recommended.


1961 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Miller

ABSTRACT Four per cent formaldehyde, insulin, or epinephrine in oil was injected for 5 days into pigeons subjected to varying degrees of hypophysectomy alone or together with large lesions in the median eminence and hypothalamus. Adrenals atrophied after the removal of the pars distalis alone or together with the neurohypophysis in untreated pigeons but showed markedly hypertrophic interrenal tissue (cortex in mammals) after treatment with formaldehyde or insulin. The slope of the dose-response curve was similar in operated and unoperated pigeons. The accumulation of bile in the liver parenchyma, which may occur after removal of the pars distalis, is an endogenous stress which was associated regularly with adrenal hypertrophy. After very large lesions of the median eminence and ventral hypothalamus in addition to total hypophysectomy, adrenals hypertrophied rather than atrophied, and the response to formaldehyde paralleled that in intact and »hypohysectomized« pigeons. Interrenal tissue was stimulated regularly; chromaffin tissue was partially degranulated, sometimes showed hyperplasia with colchicine, but only occasionally appeared hypertrophied. Epinephrine in nearly lethal doses caused only minimal adrenal enlargement. After adrenal denervation followed by hypophysectomy, the adrenals were still stimulated by formaldehyde. It appears that the interrenal tissue of the pigeon responds to a humoral stimulus not of hypophyseal origin in the absence of the hypophyseal-hypothalamic system.


1963 ◽  
Vol 42 (2_Suppl) ◽  
pp. S17-S30
Author(s):  
Fred A. Kind ◽  
Ralph I. Dorfman

ABSTRACT Thirty-seven steroids have been studied as orally effective inhibitors of ovulation in the mated oestrus rabbit. Norethisterone served as the reference standard and a dose response curve was established between the 0.31 and 1.25 mg dose levels. Nine highly active anti-ovulatory compounds are described listed in a decreasing order of potency with norethisterone having the arbitrary value of one: 6-chloro-Δ6-dehydro-17α-acetoxyprogesterone (35), 6α-methyl-Δ1-dehydro-17α-acetoxyprogesterone (≥ 10), 6-fluoro-Δ6-dehydro-17α-acetoxyprogesterone(9), 6-methyl-Δ6-dehydro-17α-acetoxyprogesterone (5), Δ6-dehydro-17α-acetoxyprogesterone (≥ 3), 6α-methyl-17α-acetoxyprogesterone (2.6), 6-chloro-Δ1,6-bisdehydro-17α-acetoxyprogesterone (≥ 2), 2-hydroxymethyl-17α-methyl-17β-hydroxyandrostan-3-one (≥ 2), and 6α-fluoro-16α-methyl-17α-acetoxyprogesterone (≥ 1.25). The anti-ovulatory activity of a compound was not related necessarily to the progestational activity of a compound nor to the anti-gonadotrophic activity as measured in parabiotic rats. 6-Chloro-Δ60dehydro-17-acetoxyprogesterone was as effective by gavage as previously shown by subcutaneous injection. 2-Hydroxymethyl-17α-methyl-17β-hydroxyandrostan-3-one was at least 2.5 times more active by gavage than by injection. While 17α-acetoxyprogesterone was a very weak anti-ovulatory steroid, modifications of the structure by addition of methyl or halogen at the 6α position with or without unsaturation greatly increased the activity. 6-Chloro-Δ6-dehydro-27α-acetoxyprogesterone was the most active compound in this series showing a relative potency of 3500 times that of the parent compound 17α-acetoxyprogesterone.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 174480692199262
Author(s):  
Ken Iwata ◽  
Yukio Takamatsu ◽  
Nagafumi Doi ◽  
Kazutaka Ikeda

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been applied for chronic pain for decades. The amounts of opioids to treat pain are sometimes reduced after a series of ECT. The effect of ECT on morphine-induced analgesia and its mechanism underlying the reduction of morphine requirement has yet to be clarified. Therefore, we administered electroconvulsive shocks (ECS) to mice and investigated the antinociceptive effect of morphine in a hot plate test. We examined the expression level of µ-opioid receptor in the thalami of mice 25 h after administration of ECS compared to the thalami of mice without ECS administration using western blotting. ECS disturbed the development of a decrease in the percentage of maximal possible effect (%MPE), which was observed 24 h after a morphine injection, when ECS was applied 25, 23, 21, and 12 h before the second administration of morphine. We also examined the effect of ECS on the dose-response curve of %MPE to morphine-antinociception. Twenty-five hours after ECS, the dose-response curve was shifted to the left, and the EC50 of morphine given to ECS-pretreated mice decreased by 30.1% compared to the mice that were not pretreated with ECS. We also found that the expression level of µ-opioid receptors was significantly increased after ECS administration. These results confirm previous clinical reports showing that ECT decreased the required dose of opioids in neuropathic pain patients and suggest the hypothesis that this effect of ECT works through the thalamus.


1981 ◽  
Vol 27 (11) ◽  
pp. 1838-1844 ◽  
Author(s):  
G A Hudson ◽  
R F Ritchie ◽  
J E Haddow

Abstract Antiserum performance in a nephelometric system can be characterized by parameters derived from measuring reaction rates. The characterization process is derived from a series of dose-response curves (elicited nephelometric response vs antigen concentration) generated from various dilutions of the antiserum being tested. Antiserum titer can then be calculated by plotting the antigen concentration found at one-half the maximum nephelometric response (Hmax) of each dose-response curve (C50) vs the corresponding antiserum dilution. Antiserum avidity can be calculated by plotting Hmax against its corresponding antiserum concentration. After general expressions are determined for C50 and Hmax vs antiserum concentration, a single dose-response curve suffices for characterizing antisera with respect to titer and avidity. Direct evidence is provided for the validity of C50 and Hmax as measures of titer and avidity by correlating these parameters with antiserum binding strength and with the number of antibodies eluted from immobilized antigen. This method can be applied to evaluate and compare different antiserum lots having the same specificity, to identify reagent inadequacies by comparing antisera of different specificity, and to predict the optimal antiserum dilution to use in performing an assay.


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