China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
The Black Death and Other Pandemics
Published in Scott M. Jackson, Skin Disease and the History of Dermatology, 2023
The infectious disease that caused the Plague of Cyprian is unknown, but the skin does not appear to have been involved in this plague as in others. Still, historians have argued that smallpox or measles was the cause.14 Smallpox is a natural candidate for the Plague of Cyprian, but in no place is a diffuse pustular rash mentioned in descriptions of the syndrome. The first definitive descriptions of measles did not appear in the medical literature until Rhazes' works of the tenth century CE. It is hard to believe that a condition as distinct and impressive as measles would exist for seven centuries and receive no attention in the medical literature of Late Antiquity. Perhaps, the measles rash was lost inside a body of literature fraught with diagnostic confusion. A process known as selection-aware molecular clock modeling places the origin of the measles virus in the sixth century BCE, confirming that the measles virus, a paramyxovirus, diverged from a devastating cattle plague known as rinderpest as humans intermingled with cattle in antiquity.15 Incidentally, rinderpest is the only other viral disease besides smallpox to be completely eradicated from the world. If smallpox and measles are excluded as candidates for the Plague of Cyprian on the basis of no evidence for skin involvement in the syndrome, with the major features of this syndrome being fever, diarrhea, vomiting, and hemorrhage, diseases that deserve stronger consideration include typhoid fever, pandemic influenza, Ebola, and other hemorrhagic fevers.16
Order Mononegavirales
Published in Paul Pumpens, Peter Pushko, Philippe Le Mercier, Virus-Like Particles, 2022
Paul Pumpens, Peter Pushko, Philippe Le Mercier
The subfamily consists of 8 genera with 34 species. Regarding public healthcare, the most important and dangerous members of the orthoparamyxoviruses are Nipah virus of the Henipavirus genus, measles virus of the Morbillivirus genus, and human parainfluenza viruses (PIVs) 1 and 3 belonging to the Respirovirus genus. The orthoparamyxoviruses remain a serious burden of animal and poultry husbandry. Thus, peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) of the Morbillivirus genus causes disease affecting goats and sheep with up to 80% mortality rate in acute cases, and members of the Atlantic salmon aquaparamyxovirus species of the Aquaparamyxovirus genus are one of the causes of proliferative gill inflammation of salmons that leads to considerable losses in fishery. Sendai virus of the Respirovirus genus is responsible for a highly transmissible respiratory tract infection in mice and occasionally in pigs. Importantly, the rinderpest, or cattle plague, caused by rinderpest virus (RPV) of the Rinderpest morbillivirus species, genus Morbillivirus, was officially proclaimed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization as fully eradicated, making it the second eliminated disease after smallpox in world history (A world without rinderpest 2014).
Introduction
Published in Cornelia Knab, Pathogens Crossing Borders, 2022
In the summer of 1920, the news of an outbreak of rinderpest in Belgium raised concerns among governments and veterinary experts in Europe. Zebus from India, to be transported to Brazil via the port of Antwerp, had transmitted the highly contagious viral disease to livestock in Belgian stables.1 It turned out that the appearance of the cattle disease in Belgium was not an isolated case in Europe during those years. As a consequence of warfare with its movements of troops and trails of refugees, accompanied by livestock, outbreaks of rinderpest occurred from 1918 to the early 1920s in several countries of Eastern Europe, as well as briefly in Greece and in Italy.2 The European governments had good reasons to be concerned about rinderpest and the animal disease situation in general. For centuries, epizootics (epidemics of animals) had on several continents severely damaged the economic livelihood of societies depending on animal husbandry. Rinderpest could rapidly spread among different species of domestic and wild animals with an extremely high rate of mortality, and outbreaks often resulted in devastating consequences for livestock owners. Moreover, the news about rinderpest in Europe came at a very difficult time for the war-stricken livestock sector—several European countries were facing severe outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in the same year.3 Another highly contagious viral animal disease, foot-and-mouth disease occurred repeatedly in many regions of the world. It was—and still is—one of the most dreaded animal diseases due to its easy transmission among animals and the massive economic damage it can cause to livestock farming.
Transmission-Blocking Vaccines: Harnessing Herd Immunity for Malaria Elimination
Published in Expert Review of Vaccines, 2021
Malaria elimination and eradication have received renewed interest and prioritization, but existing tools are insufficient to eliminate from areas of stable transmission [1]. Vaccines played an important role to eliminate or eradicate other infectious diseases of humans or animals, such as smallpox, poliomyelitis, and rinderpest [2,3]. Vaccines are safe, cost-effective, can be administered to large populations in mass campaigns, and provide an extended window of immunological activity against pathogens. While traditionally developed to prevent infection and disease in individuals, the effect of vaccines to prevent onward transmission of the infectious agent is pivotal to elimination and eradication efforts in communities. In this way, vaccines benefit both immunized and non-immunized individuals through herd immunity, thus protecting groups who may not receive the intervention.
An oral bait vaccination approach for the Tasmanian devil facial tumor diseases
Published in Expert Review of Vaccines, 2020
Andrew S. Flies, Emily J. Flies, Samantha Fox, Amy Gilbert, Shylo R. Johnson, Guei-Sheung Liu, A. Bruce Lyons, Amanda L. Patchett, David Pemberton, Ruth J. Pye
The ideal vaccine must be potent, innocuous to humans and other animals, and exhibit negligible excretion and low horizontal transmission risk in hosts. It must also be thermostable for several days at ambient temperatures, genetically stable concerning reversion to a virulent phenotype, free of contaminants, and relatively inexpensive to produce [62,63]. Several factors support the reality of a vaccine to block transmission and eliminate DFTs. First, vaccination of translocated devils from insurance populations has demonstrated that strong anti-tumor immune responses can be induced in vaccinated devils [48]. Second, a DFT1 vaccine coupled with subsequent immunotherapy has induced regressions in devils inoculated with DFT1 cells [35]. Advances in biotechnology incorporated with the expanding toolbox for devil immunology will build on these foundations to accelerate vaccine development [13,39,40,42,64–67]. Third, smallpox in humans and rinderpest in wild and domestic animals have been eliminated on a global scale; rabies has been controlled on national scales through vaccination. In comparison, the relatively small (~65,000 km2) island of Tasmania presents a more practical challenge.
Candidate vaccines for human Rift Valley fever
Published in Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy, 2019
In endemic countries, major outbreaks of RVF occur only sporadically. In this regard, a stockpile RVF vaccine should be stable for long-term storage with a cold chain (e.g. 4–8°C, −20°C). Cold chain is not often available with limited resources, which may compromise even short-term storage of an RVF vaccine on site. Rinderpest was one of the most devastating animal diseases in Asia, Africa, and Europe, but it was officially eradicated in 2011 as a result of successful vaccination campaigns [54]. The Thermovax vaccine was developed for rinderpest using modified lyophilization techniques, that had a recommended shelf life of 30 days outside the cold chain, with demonstrated vaccine stability at 37°C for eight months [54,55]. This demonstrates that a thermostable vaccine can be effectively used in developing countries as it would allow the delivery of vaccines to remote areas without cold chains. RVF candidate vaccines should thus undergo further characterization and modification of a thermostable formulation to be available in endemic countries.