Diagnostic Reasoning and Clinical Problem Solving
Cheston B. Cunha, Burke A. Cunha in Infectious Diseases and Antimicrobial Stewardship in Critical Care Medicine, 2020
Exposure history is very important in dealing with diagnosis possibilities with AVE. A variety of insect vectors transport a variety of pathogens, e.g., mosquitos and WNE as well as ticks and Lyme neuroborreliosis. The CNS Lyme disease presents as a very mild AVM. In contrast, WNE may present as a fulminant AVE ± tremors or flaccid paralysis. The “great imitator” is HSV, which may present as a mild AVM or as severe acute AVE with obtundation/coma. Important in the history of cases of AVE where HSV is the DDx is a recent past medical history of H. labialis. Patients with HSV AVE with a PMH of H. labialis may report lip blisters in the preceding 1–3 weeks (gone later when the patient presents). If H. labialis is present when the patient with AVE presents, it is not due to HSV. The HSV from H. labialis needs time to regress and later invade the brain parenchyma as AVE.
Climate change *
Jamie Bartram, Rachel Baum, Peter A. Coclanis, David M. Gute, David Kay, Stéphanie McFadyen, Katherine Pond, William Robertson, Michael J. Rouse in Routledge Handbook of Water and Health, 2015
Changing environmental conditions, as well as human behavior, can affect the distribution and occurrence of insect vector-borne diseases (see Chapter 6). Increasing temperatures and changes in rainfall pattern will change the area of land with climates suitable for disease transmission, including mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue. Increased rainfall is more likely to result in standing water for mosquitoes to breed in, while household water storage during periods of water scarcity can also provide breeding grounds. Small changes in warming may lead to large increases in transmission of malaria if conditions are suitable (Smith et al., 2014), and there is potential for spread to areas not currently affected, especially if health and governance systems are not strong.
Engineering control of insect-borne diseases
Sandy Cairncross, Richard Feachem in Environmental Health Engineering in the Tropics, 2018
Certain diseases are transmitted by particular species of insect, known as vectors. The most important insect vectors are mosquitoes, flies, bugs, ticks1 and lice. Vectors may be mechanical or biological. A mechanical vector simply transports pathogens on or in its body from one place to another. An example is the transportation of faecal pathogens by flies or cockroaches. This chapter deals mainly with biological vectors. A biological vector is actually infected by the pathogen, which develops or multiplies (or both) inside the body of the vector. Any disease having such a vector is clearly open to control by engineering measures directed against that vector. Table 15.1 gives some generalised information about the vectors of the major vector-borne diseases, which include many serious tropical infections.
The relevance of studying insect–nematode interactions for human disease
Published in Pathogens and Global Health, 2022
Zorada Swart, Tuan A. Duong, Brenda D. Wingfield, Alisa Postma, Bernard Slippers
Filarial nematodes are transmitted to their vertebrate hosts by mosquitoes of different genera [4]. Consequently, transmission can be interrupted by targeting the insect vector. Vector control usually consists of spraying insecticides inside homes and distributing netting material impregnated with long-lasting insecticides [43,44]. Other vector control strategies target the source of mosquitoes, for instance, polystyrene beads that form floating layers on potential breeding sites such as pit latrines and water tanks suffocate mosquito larvae, leading to a drastic decline in the adult mosquito population [45–47]. Combined vector control and MDA suppress the transmission of filariasis more effectively and with less resurgence than MDA alone. A focus on integrated vector management in addition to MDA was therefore included in the strategic plan for 2010–2020 of the Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis [48].
Infravec2 guidelines for the design and operation of containment level 2 and 3 insectaries in Europe
Published in Pathogens and Global Health, 2023
Emilie Pondeville, Anna-Bella Failloux, Frederic Simard, Petr Volf, Andrea Crisanti, Roya Elaine Haghighat-Khah, Núria Busquets, Francesc Xavier Abad, Anthony J Wilson, Romeo Bellini, Sarah Marsh Arnaud, Alain Kohl, Eva Veronesi
Containment of arthropods (for example, those which are non-native to an area, those which are genetically modified (GM) and those which are infected with notifiable pathogens) as well as safe manipulation of pathogens are essential prerequisites for safe work and handling in this area of research. Historically, reported laboratory escapes of insect vectors leading to sustainable settlement and/or disease spread are extremely rare [2], and so far, there are no reports of laboratory escapes of insect-borne pathogens resulting in transmission outside the laboratory to the best of our knowledge. With the current expansion of vector-based research, and an increasing number of facilities rearing and infecting insect vectors for the study of vector–pathogen interactions, common measures for safe work are timely.
What translatable knowledge from dengue vaccine design can we pass onto future anti-parasitic vaccine development?
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery, 2020
Anon Srikiatkhachorn
Another important deficit in our understanding involves factors contributing to the maintenance of immune effector functions. For example, the duration of antigen persistence and the requirement for natural boosting for the continuing stimulation of B cells to produce long-lasting plasma cells, and to maintain effector functions of T cells are not known. The maintenance for T cell effector functions appears to be critical for the protection and disease resolution in parasitic infection such as leishmania and malaria. For organisms that are transmitted through insect vectors, the immune response to vector derived antigens and the microbiome of the vectors and of the host skin likely influence the immune response to organisms both in term of the quality and the magnitude of the response. None of the existing vaccines truly replicate natural immune induction. A better understanding of naturally acquired immune responses in humans at the site of inoculation will be informative in the development of vaccines against vector-borne pathogens.
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