Virus ancestry could help predict next pandemic
Virus family history could help scientists identify which strains have the potential to become the so-called Disease X that causes the next global pandemic.
Virus family history could help scientists identify which strains have the potential to become the so-called Disease X that causes the next global pandemic.
Evolution
Feb 5, 2024
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Many reports from antiquity about outbreaks of plague mention Egypt as the source of pestilences that reached the Mediterranean. But was this really the case? Researchers from the University of Basel are conducting a critical ...
Archaeology
Dec 12, 2023
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39
New findings by biological sciences researchers at the University of Arkansas indicate that males play an outsized role in both the infection rate and spread of the avian bacterial pathogen Mycoplasma gallisepticum, a common ...
Ecology
Dec 5, 2023
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Recurring influenza epidemics, such as the one during World War I, the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) outbreak in the 2010s, and the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years have made it evident that contagious ...
Bio & Medicine
Nov 7, 2023
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78
For the past couple of decades, tens of thousands of people living in rural Sri Lanka have been devastated by kidney failure due to unclear causes, also known as CKDu. Similar incidences of mysterious kidney diseases have ...
Environment
Oct 11, 2023
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2444
Look back at the chronicle of global pandemics, and the flu pandemic of 1918 stands out as an anomaly for one reason: According to the history books, it struck healthy adults in their prime just as often, if not more so, ...
Archaeology
Oct 9, 2023
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60
A team of researchers at the University of Waterloo and Dalhousie University have developed a method for forecasting the short-term progression of an epidemic using extremely limited amounts of data.
Molecular & Computational biology
Aug 31, 2023
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Influenza epidemics, caused by influenza A or B viruses, result in acute respiratory infection. They kill half a million people worldwide every year. These viruses can also wreak havoc on animals, as in the case of avian ...
Cell & Microbiology
May 31, 2023
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14
Toxoplasma gondii—otherwise known as Toxo—is a parasite that infects one fourth of the world's human population. While Toxo remains alive within most of its hosts, the active acute forms of the parasite are quickly suppressed ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 21, 2023
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83
To many, EV stands for "electric vehicle." To researchers at Harvard University and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, it's shorthand for another vehicle—this one nanoscopic—that might help streamline the development ...
Bio & Medicine
Jan 30, 2023
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In epidemiology, an epidemic (επι (epi)- meaning "upon or above" and δεμος (demos)- meaning "people"), occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience.:354 Epidemiologists often consider the term outbreak to be synonymous to epidemic, but the general public typically perceives outbreaks to be more local and less serious than epidemics:55, 354
An epidemic may be restricted to one locale, however if it spreads to other countries or continents and affects a substantial number of people, it may be termed a pandemic.:55 The declaration of an epidemic usually requires a good understanding of a baseline rate of incidence; epidemics for certain diseases, such as influenza, are defined as reaching some defined increase in incidence above this baseline. A few cases of a very rare disease may be classified as an epidemic, while many cases of a common disease (such as the common cold) would not.
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