Strategies for Pandemic Prevention

[Thornton]

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/arch....msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/05/17/194961.aspx

An introduction to the "origins initiative," an article in this week?s Nature and other commentaries. Much of the material is familiar to long term flutrackers, but it is presented here as a coherent and generally applicable public health prevention effort. This also reminds us that even for specialized flutrackers, that it is important for us to understand AIDS, TB, measles, malaria and other diseases.

Excerpt:

They [the authors] trace five stages leading from a cross-species disease to a human pandemic:
? Pathogens found only in animals but not detected in humans under natural conditions - for example, most malarial plasmodia.
? Pathogens that are transmitted from animals to humans but not among humans, such as anthrax, rabies and West Nile virus.
? Pathogens that jump from animals to humans, but are transmitted among humans for only a few cycles before the outbreak dies out. The Ebola and Marburg viruses are examples.
? Pathogens that can be transmitted from animals to humans, and also from human to human in a long outbreak cycle. This category takes in cholera, influenza A, typhus, yellow fever and dengue fever.
? Pathogens that are passed exclusively from human to human, either because they go back to the beginnings of humanity or because the species-jumping microbe quickly evolved to become human-specific. Examples of the Stage 5 sicknesses include HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, as well as measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox and syphilis.
The researchers go on to note how infectious agents linked to animals have shaped history - for example, why indigenous Americans were vulnerable to European settlers' diseases but not vice versa (it has to do with domesticated animals, or the lack thereof).
They wind up their paper with the call to action, starting out with a proposal for an "origins initiative" to fill the gaps in our knowledge about the roots of a dozen major diseases: AIDS, cholera, dengue fever, falciparum malaria, hepatitis B, influenza A, measles, plague, rotavirus, smallpox, tuberculosis and typhoid. Pathogens from a wide range of wild and domesticated animals would be analyzed.

Associated links:
http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=3623&language=1

Reference: Nature 447, 279 (2007)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v447/n7142/full/nature05775.html
Nathan D. Wolfe1, Claire Panosian Dunavan2 & Jared Diamond3. Origins of major human infectious diseases
Nature 447, 279-283 (17 May 2007) | doi:10.1038/nature05775;

- jt -

 

[gsgs]

Re: Strategies for Pandemic Prevention

good, when it applies to other diseases too, but I think
they should concentrate on influenza first now,
with the H5N1-threat. Every disease is different.
And handling it together with other threats somehow diminishes
its perceived importance.