scholarly journals THE CHYTRID BLINDERS 2.0: HOW ARE WE DOING?

Author(s):  
Amanda Duffus

Amphibians are declining around the world and infectious diseases are thought to play a key role in these declines, along with habitat destruction and other environmental factors.  Since the late 1900s, several emerging infections have been identified in amphibians. The chytrids, of which there are two known to affect amphibians, Batrachochytrium dendtrobatids, and B. salamandrivorans; and ranaviruses are perhaps the most well-known and studied. There are also other, lesser known and studied pathogenic agents such as Perkinsea spp. and herpesviruses; that have emerged in approximately the same timeline, which may also be contributing to amphibian population dynamics. In this piece we examine the progress that has been made over the past decade in understanding ‘The Big Three’ and specifically how the emergence of B. salamandrivorans has brought together much of the amphibian disease world in the last half of the 2010s.

Author(s):  
Doug Fink

Infectious diseases are global and local. They impact health and dis­ease in every country, but protean factors— cultural, geographical, and political— determine their particular local distribution. Every single patient is globally colonized by microorganisms, but singular behaviours, genetics and co- morbidities significantly determine what organisms cause disease in any individual. The practice of infectious diseases medi­cine necessarily demands an understanding of the person and the world in which they live. This chapter will emphasize the importance of context in assessing patients for infectious diseases. In terms of global mortality, communicable diseases remain the leading causes of mortality. Despite the evocative epithet of ‘infectious diseases’, these are not all caused by creatures that creep and crawl. Cosmopolitan diseases (i.e. universally distributed infections such as influenza or bac­terial pneumonia) represent a huge burden wherever medicine is prac­tised. However, it is important to note that in high- resource settings, infection imported by travel and migration is increasing. In particular, the international traffic of emerging infections, such as Zika virus, and anti-microbial resistance (AMR) are already major healthcare problems. As the world shrinks and the climate changes, the distribution of infectious diseases will continue to change. The threat of AMR no longer looms— it is a present and real danger. In the time it will take for disciples of this text to reach the end of their specialty training, AMR will account annually for more deaths than cancer. The delivery of almost all interventional, surgical, and immunomodulatory therapies depends on our ability to provide effective anti- microbial prophylaxis and rescue. The ability of organisms to adapt rapidly to novel iatrogenic selection pressures means that the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), tuberculosis (TB), malaria, and manifold other pathogens will be compromised, not simply anti- bacterial agents. The future of modern medicine depends on the global healthcare community sharing both concern and responsibility. This chapter will include cases pertaining to the management of AMR.


Biomolecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatma Elrashdy ◽  
Elrashdy M. Redwan ◽  
Vladimir N. Uversky

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is causing a pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The worldwide transmission of COVID-19 from human to human is spreading like wildfire, affecting almost every country in the world. In the past 100 years, the globe did not face a microbial pandemic similar in scale to COVID-19. Taken together, both previous outbreaks of other members of the coronavirus family (severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV) and middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV)) did not produce even 1% of the global harm already inflicted by COVID-19. There are also four other CoVs capable of infecting humans (HCoVs), which circulate continuously in the human population, but their phenotypes are generally mild, and these HCoVs received relatively little attention. These dramatic differences between infection with HCoVs, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2 raise many questions, such as: Why is COVID-19 transmitted so quickly? Is it due to some specific features of the viral structure? Are there some specific human (host) factors? Are there some environmental factors? The aim of this review is to collect and concisely summarize the possible and logical answers to these questions.


Author(s):  
Oyere Tanyi Ebob ◽  
Smith B. Babiaka ◽  
Fidele Ntie-Kang

AbstractFor the past 2 years, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 infection has become a world pandemic, ruining the lives and economies of several nations in the world. This has scaled up research on the virus and the resulting infection with the goal of developing new vaccines and therapies. Natural products are known to be a rich source of lead compounds for drug discovery, including against infectious diseases caused by microbes (viruses, bacteria and fungi). In this review article, we conducted a literature survey aimed at identifying natural products with inhibitory concentrations against the coronaviruses or their target proteins, which lie below 10 µM. This led to the identification of 42 compounds belonging to the alkaloid, flavonoid, terpenoid, phenolic, xanthone and saponin classes. The cut off concentration of 10 µM was to limit the study to the most potent chemical entities, which could be developed into therapies against the viral infection to make a contribution towards limiting the spread of the disease.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-94
Author(s):  
A. B. Belov

The history of the study of infections attributed by the microbiologist and epidemiologist V.I. Tersky in 1958 as the class of human infectious diseases – «Sapronoses» is presented. Over the past 60 years in the world and especially in Russian science the knowledge that allows us to complete the development of an ecological and epidemiological theory of sapronoses infections was accumulated. This knowledge should be extended to the whole complex of biomedical sciences associated with the population pathology of biota. To solve the controversial and complex issues of the theory, terminology and classifications of population infectology, it is necessary to integrate the knowledge of specialists in various fields of research and practice in the medicine, veterinary medicine, parasitology, phytopathology and other disciplines. The ways and prospects of improving the general theory of infectology in the light of new approaches to understanding the essence of sapronoses are discussed. 


2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1567) ◽  
pp. 1080-1089 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Foley ◽  
M. Mirazón Lahr

The abundant evidence that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa within the past 200 000 years, and dispersed across the world only within the past 100 000 years, provides us with a strong framework in which to consider the evolution of human diversity. While there is evidence that the human capacity for culture has a deeper history, going beyond the origin of the hominin clade, the tendency for humans to form cultures as part of being distinct communities and populations changed markedly with the evolution of H. sapiens . In this paper, we investigate ‘cultures’ as opposed to ‘culture’, and the question of how and why, compared to biological diversity, human communities and populations are so culturally diverse. We consider the way in which the diversity of human cultures has developed since 100 000 years ago, and how its rate was subject to environmental factors. We argue that the causes of this diversity lie in the distribution of resources and the way in which human communities reproduce over several generations, leading to fissioning of kin groups. We discuss the consequences of boundary formation through culture in their broader ecological and evolutionary contexts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
O. V. Lisohurska ◽  
D. V. Lisohurska ◽  
V. M. Sokolyuk ◽  
S. V. Furman ◽  
M. M. Kryvyi ◽  
...  

Over the last decades, the number of honey bee colonies in the world has been declining. A honey bee is the most important pollinator in agriculture. According to estimates, such a situation can threaten the food security of humanity. The purpose was to investigate the specific aspects of the managed honey bee population in Zhytomyr region. The population dynamics, number, and density were determined. For this purpose the statistics of the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine on the number of bee colonies by categories of producers in Ukraine and Zhytomyr region were used. It was established that in Zhytomyr region over the past quarter century, the population of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) has increased by 2 times up to 193.4 thousand colonies. During the same period, the number of bee colonies in Ukraine has increased by 1.4 times. At present, Zhytomyr region is a leader in the state in the development of the beekeeping industry. Eight percent of all honey bee colonies in the country are concentrated here. In the Zhytomyr region, the density of honey bee population is one of the highest in Ukraine. 82 colonies are concentrated here on one conditional pasture area (1256 hectares), with 7 colonies per 100 hectares of land. In Ukraine, these indicators are 52 and 4 respectively. The distribution of bee colonies in the region is uneven. The vast majority of colonies (58.5%) are concentrated in the Polissia. There are from 1 to 18 colonies per 100 hectares of land in each of the units in the region, on the conditional pasture area from 16 to 224. The results of these studies are relevant for the commodity apiaries for the rational use of honey flow and to make a well-considered decision on the prospect of increasing the number of bee colonies. Further work will be aimed at the investigation into the melliferous base and the calculation of the feed balance of the beekeeping industry in Zhytomyr region.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 85-96
Author(s):  
Michael Gracey

Throughout history mankind has suffered many scourges. In many parts of the world improvements in living standards, hygiene, nutrition, medical care and preventive public health programmes have made many of these infectious , diseases things of the past. However, in the so called "developing" countries, diarrhoeal diseases of infancy and childhood are still major problems which cause many millions of deaths each year (Mata, 1985).


Itinerario ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-136
Author(s):  
P. C. Emmer ◽  
Ralph Shlomowitz

During the past few decades, many scholars have studied the various demographic consequences of European overseas expansion. One focus of attention has been the fatal impact of European expansion on the native populations of the New World. Before contact with Europeans, the native populations of the Americas, Australia, and the Pacific were generally free of infectious diseases, and so lacked immunity to diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza, which were introduced by Europeans. A second focus of attention has been the mortality among Europeans when they went overseas and encountered new diseases, such as malaria, yellow fever, and cholera, to which they had no immunity. And a third focus of attention has been the mortality among various African, Asian, and Pacific Islander labourers when they were procured as slaves or indentured servants for work on European plantations in various parts of the world.


1983 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. L. Beaman ◽  
A. M. Sugar

There are three commonly recognized species ofNocardiathat cause disease in a large variety of animals including humans. In the United States, pulmonary or systemic nocardiosis in humans caused byN. asteroidesis most frequently diagnosed. It should be noted thatN. brasiliensiscan cause nocardiosis also. In Central and South America mycetomas induced byN. brasiliensisappear to be more prevalent even thoughN. asteroidescan be seen in this type of infection. Sporadic cases of both mycetoma and nocardiosis caused byN. caviaehave been reported. These three species ofNocardiaappear to be present in the soils of most countries; butN. asteroidesis more frequently isolated in the temperate climates whereasN. brasiliensispredominates in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. No specific geographic distribution has been noted withN. caviae. Infections involving these three species of bacteria are, therefore, worldwide in occurrence. Even though nocardial infections in both humans and animals were recognized as early as 1888, traditionally, they have been considered rare in frequency as compared to many other infectious diseases. This is a perception that probably is not accurate. During the past twenty years, greater diagnostic awareness combined with more intensive medical and veterinary surveillance have resulted in significantly increased recognition of disease caused by these aerobic actinomycetes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Izurieta ◽  
Adriana Campos ◽  
Jeegan Parikh ◽  
Tatiana Gardellini

Plagues and pandemics are no longer distant thoughts of the past. Previously referred as moments in history, infectious diseases have re-emerged as potential existential threats to mankind. International Health Security researchers have repeatedly warned society about impending pandemics and in 2020, the world experienced its first major pandemic in over a century. The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic came fast and hit hard, impacting the entire world within months of discovery. Although SARS-CoV-2 was a completely novel virus, there are an assortment of novel and timeworn pathogens fostering the potential to become the next pandemic. This chapter focuses on pathogens ranging from yeast to virus, capable of transmission through food, water, air, or animal, that could emerge as the next International Health Security threat.


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