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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Microbiology (non-medical)
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Super-Spreading in Infectious Diseases (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R5,881
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Super-Spreading in Infectious Diseases (Hardcover)
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As one of the biological factors that most powerfully impacted
history, infectious diseases continue to be a leading cause of
global morbidity and mortality. At least two major factors are
making infectious diseases assume more important roles than ever
before. One of these is the increasing ability of certain
microorganisms, normally limited to other species, to cross or jump
across the species barrier and become human pathogens. The second
factor -- our increasing and unprecedented global mobility which
has made traveling between any two remote locations on the planet
possible in less than 24 hours. As a result, a local outbreak
anywhere in the world becomes a global concern. A significant
challenge that is shared by most (if not all) infectious diseases
is our insufficient understanding of the dynamic host-pathogen
interaction. In particular, one of the gaps in visualizing our
interaction with microorganisms stems from the fact that
historically, pathogen transmission in populations was assumed to
be homogeneous, with infected individuals having approximately
equal opportunities to infect secondary contacts. However, in what
became known as "the 20/80 rule", an increasing number of studies
and observations point towards a small number of individuals (20%)
that are responsible for most (80%) transmission events in a
population. This minority of individuals who infect a
disproportionately large number of secondary contacts has become
known as "super-spreaders". The phenomenon of super-spreading lies
at the core of understanding the biology of microorganisms and
their ability to cause outbreaks, and is instrumental for
developing and implementing preventive and therapeutic strategies.
This book proposes to examine super-spreading in infectious
diseases. Super-spreading dates back as far as Typhoid Mary, the
first documented example, and it was documented for most
microorganisms, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Plasmodium
and Schistosoma species, HIV, hepatitis C, influenza virus, Ebola
virus, rhinoviruses, Escherichia coli, West Nile virus, and the
SARS coronavirus. A thought-provoking find from the SARS pandemic
was that in the absence of super-spreading events, most infected
individuals caused very few (if any) secondary contacts, but a low
number of super-spreaders fueled the global outbreak.
Super-spreading was described in human, animal, and plant hosts,
and it exists at the level of the individual as well as at that of
the species. One of the common denominators of super-spreading
events is that they are virtually always identified only
retroactively, as part of epidemiologic investigations. There is,
however, a great interest and an acute need in being able to
prospectively predict super-spreading, as this would considerably
improve the opportunities to prevent, control, and limit outbreaks.
A fundamentally important and far-reaching topic in infectious
diseases, the study of super-spreading holds key implications for
managing epidemics and pandemics, and promises to fill an important
gap in microbiology, medicine, public health, agriculture, animal
sciences, and biodefense.
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