Objections to the Russo–Williamson Thesis
Donald Gillies in Causality, Probability, and Medicine, 2019
As we have seen, the very first hypothesis which Semmelweis considers is that puerperal fever is caused by a miasma, and he rejects this hypothesis. Semmelweis also states quite explicitly that, in his view, puerperal fever is not caused by a contagion. As he says (1861, p. 117): Childbed fever is not a contagious disease. A contagious disease is one that produces the contagion by which the disease is spread. This contagion brings about only the same disease in other individuals. Smallpox is a contagious disease because smallpox generates the contagion that causes smallpox in others. Smallpox causes only smallpox and no other disease. … Childbed fever is different. This fever can be caused in healthy patients through other diseases. In the first clinic it was caused by a discharging medullary carcinoma of the uterus, by exhalations from a carious knee, and by cadaverous particles from heterogeneous corpses. … However, childbed fever cannot be transmitted to a healthy maternity patient unless decaying animal-organic matter is conveyed.
Fractional SIR Epidemic Model of Childhood Disease with Mittag-Leffler Memory
Devendra Kumar, Jagdev Singh in Fractional Calculus in Medical and Health Science, 2020
An epidemic is the swift evolution of infectious disease in a given population to a huge number of people within a small period of time. In the eighteenth century, Swiss physicist and mathematician Bernoulli proposed and cultivated the concept of mathematical modelling for the evolution of disease [1], which provides the origin to the development of modern epidemiology. Later in the twentieth century, Ross et al. [2] established the modelling of infectious disease and elucidated the nature of epidemic models by the help of the law of mass action. Recently, epidemic models are widely applied to analyse the epidemiological processes that contain the contagious disease transmission.
The COVID-19 pandemic and development of drugs and vaccinations
Edward M. Rafalski, Ross M. Mullner in Healthcare Analytics, 2022
Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from those who are not sick6. This is a great public health practice to protect the public by preventing exposure to people who have or may have a contagious disease. During isolation, it is recommended to (1) stay at home for 14 days after the last contact with a person suspected to be infected by COVID-19, (2) avoid contact during these 14 days with even the individuals within the same household, and (3) monitor for symptoms such as – fever/temperature, chills, body aches, cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, etc.
The novel target:exosoms derived from M2 macrophage
Published in International Reviews of Immunology, 2021
Yuyang Hou, Yuntong Liu, Shu Liang, Ru Ding, Shuqian Mo, Dongmei Yan, Dong Li
Viral infection is a highly contagious disease that spreads quickly [41]. Since the twentieth century, from the "Spanish Flu" in 1918 to the recent coronavirus pneumonia caused by SARS-CoV-2, viral infection has become a major public health problem on the global scale. Studies found that exosomes and viruses have highly similar characteristics in intracellular morphological structure and intercellular release or absorption, meanwhile exosomes are involved in both intracellular and intercellular replication and transmission of viruses (Table 1). These have shown that the synthesis of viral genetic materials in infected cells and the reproduction of progeny are cross-linked to the biogenesis mechanism of exosomes, which transfer the viral genetic materials from infected cells to surrounding normal cells [46,47], at the same time, it can directly regulate the immune response under the condition of virus infection [41, 47]. High mutation of HA (Hyaluronic acid, HA) protein often leads to immune escape when the human infected with virus, so there is no specific vaccine with high efficiency and low toxicity, therefore an emerging molecular therapy is urgently needed to make up for the short board of traditional anti-virus currently.
The Association Between Social Network and Fear of COVID-19 Among Older Adults
Published in Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 2022
Matthew Schilz, Andrew Steward, Kaipeng Wang, M. Pilar Ingle, Carson M. De Fries, Leslie K. Hasche
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2021), COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease that typically causes respiratory symptoms similar to a cold, flu, or pneumonia. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on 11 March 2020 (Cucinotta & Vanelli, 2020). While symptoms are often mild, some people experience severe illness, and COVID-19 has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States alone. Research indicates that older adults are more at-risk of contracting COVID-19 due to decreased immune response and other comorbidities (Banerjee 2020; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] 2021), which may contribute to increased fear among this population (Girdhar et al., 2020). Fear of COVID-19 may be higher among the oldest age groups (Han et al., 2021) and women (Parlapani et al., 2020). Fear of COVID-19 is associated with increased transmission, morbidity, and mortality rates, in addition to psychosocial challenges (Ahorsu et al., 2020), which are similar to the impacts of other infectious diseases (Pappas et al., 2009).
Current perspectives in assessing humoral immunity after measles vaccination
Published in Expert Review of Vaccines, 2019
Iana H. Haralambieva, Richard B. Kennedy, Inna G. Ovsyannikova, Daniel J. Schaid, Gregory A. Poland
Measles is a highly contagious disease, which has been eliminated in the United States for more than 18 years. It is still a common threat in the underdeveloped world with potentially life-threatening sequelae and over 450 known pediatric deaths each day [1]. It was estimated that over 7 million people were infected with measles worldwide in 2016 with 89,780 reported measles-related deaths [2]. Measles outbreaks have been limited in the United States during the last few years and are mainly a result of importation and predominantly involve unvaccinated individuals who travel, as well as their contacts (e.g., 86 reported measles cases in 2016; 118 measles cases in 2017; and 124 measles cases from 22 states in 2018, as of 11 August 2018) [3,4]. In 2017, the World Health Organization announced a four-fold rise in the number of measles cases in Europe (23,927 cases), with large outbreaks affecting more than 15 European countries [5,6]. Furthermore, over 41,000 measles cases were reported in Europe for the first half of 2018 (the most affected countries were France, Georgia, Greece, Italy, the Russian Federation, Serbia, and Ukraine), with at least 37 reported pediatric deaths [5,6]. This resurgence of measles is primarily due to failure to vaccinate and sustain high immunization coverage with the two-dose measles vaccination schedule in the affected countries/regions. However, this is an indication that measles is and will continue to be a public health concern for both developing and developed countries for the foreseeable future.
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