Search results for "Communicable Disease"
showing 10 items of 192 documents
Relations between Air Quality and Covid-19 Lockdown Measures in Valencia, Spain
2021
The set of measures to contain the diffusion of COVID-19 instituted by the European governments gave an unparalleled opportunity to improve our understanding of the transport and industrial sectors’ contribution to urban air pollution. The purpose of this study was to assess the impacts of the lockdown measures on air quality and pollutant emissions in Valencia, Spain. For this reason, we determined if there was a significant difference in the concentration levels of different particulate matter (PM) sizes, PM10, PM2.5, and NOx, NO2, NO, and O3, between the period of restrictions in 2020 and the same period in 2019. Our findings indicated that PM pollutant levels during the lockdown period…
Recreational noise pollution of traditional festivals reduces the juvenile productivity of an avian urban bioindicator.
2021
Noise is a pollutant of emergent concern for ecologists and conservation biologists. Recreational noise pollution, especially unpredictable and intermittent sounds, and its effects on wildlife and biodiversity have been poorly studied. Researchers have paid very little attention to the effect of noisy traditional festivals (fireworks and powder-guns). This study aimed to explore the effect of these recreational activities on the juvenile productivity of an urban avian bioindicator: the house sparrow. We studied five pairs of localities in the Valencia Region (E Spain) with noisy traditional festivals. Each pair was composed of one locality with festivals during the breeding season and the c…
Benefits of immune protection versus immunopathology costs: a synthesis from cytokine KO models.
2017
5 pages; International audience; The inflammatory response can produce damage to host tissues and in several infectious diseases the most severe symptoms are due to immunopathology rather than a direct effect of pathogen multiplication. One hypothesis for the persistence of inflammatory damage posits that the benefits of protection towards infection outweigh the costs. We used data on knocked-out (KO) cytokine models [and the corresponding wild-type (WT) controls] to test this hypothesis. We computed differences in pathogen load and host survival between WT and KO and divided them by the WT values. Using this ratio provides an internal control for variation in pathogen species, host strain,…
Immunity and the emergence of virulent pathogens.
2013
6 pages; International audience; The emergence/re-emergence of infectious diseases has been one of the major concerns for human and wildlife health. In spite of the medical and veterinary progresses as to prevent and cure infectious diseases, during the last decades we have witnessed the emergence/re-emergence of virulent pathogens that pose a threat to humans and wildlife. Many factors that might drive the emergence of these novel pathogens have been identified and several reviews have been published on this topic in the last years. Among the most cited and recognized drivers of pathogen emergence are climate change, habitat destruction, increased contact with reservoirs, etc. These factor…
Town population size and structuring into villages and households drive infectious disease risks in pre-healthcare Finland
2021
Social life is often considered to cost in terms of increased parasite or pathogen risk. However, evidence for this in the wild remains equivocal, possibly because populations and social groups are often structured, which affects the local transmission and extinction of diseases. We test how the structuring of towns into villages and households influenced the risk of dying from three easily diagnosable infectious diseases—smallpox, pertussis and measles—using a novel dataset covering almost all of Finland in the pre-healthcare era (1800–1850). Consistent with previous results, the risk of dying from all three diseases increased with the local population size. However, the division of towns …
From bedside to bench: The missing brick for patients with fungal sepsis
2016
We read with great interest the article by Spec et al. [1] investigating the immunophenotype of T cells from patients with Candida spp. sepsis. This is the first observational study describing the altered immune response of patients with candidemia. The authors included non-neutropenic critically ill patients with candidemia and non-septic controls, and excluded patients with human immunodeficiency virus infection, who had undergone solid or bone marrow transplantation or with other known causes of impaired immune response. The authors hypothesized that their findings may help explain why patients with fungal sepsis show a high mortality despite appropriate antifungal therapy. In our opinio…
Sex- and age patterns in incidence of infectious diseases in Germany: analyses of surveillance records over a 13-year period (2001–2013)
2018
AbstractSex differences in the incidence of infections may indicate different risk factors and behaviour but have not been analysed across pathogens. Based on 3.96 million records of 33 pathogens in Germany, notified from 2001 to 2013, we applied Poisson regression to generate age-standardised incidence rate ratios and assessed their distribution across age and sex. The following trends became apparent: (a) pathogens with male incidence preponderance at infant and child age (meningococcal disease (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 1.19, 95% CI 1.03–1.38, age = 0–4); influenza (IRR = 1.09, 95% CI 1.06–1.13, age = 0–4)), (b) pathogens with sex-switch in incidence preponderance at puberty (e.g. nor…
Evolution of major non-HIV-related comorbidities in HIV-infected patients in the Italian Cohort of Individuals, Naïve for Antiretrovirals (ICONA) Fou…
2018
Objectives: The management of HIV disease is complicated by the incidence of a new spectrum of comorbid noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). It is important to document changes in the prevalence of NCDs over time. The aim of the study was to describe the impact of ageing on HIV markers and on the prevalence of NCDs in people living with HIV (PLWHIV) in the Italian Cohort of Individuals, Naïve for Antiretrovirals (ICONA) seen for care in 2004–2014. Methods: Analyses were conducted separately for a closed cohort (same people seen at both times) and an open cohort (all people under follow-up). We used the χ2 test for categorical factors and the Wilcoxon test for quantitative factors to compare pro…
Behavioural and structural interventions in cancer prevention: towards the 2030 SDG horizon
2020
Interventions in individual lifestyles have often been viewed as the main component of cancer prevention strategies. However, environmental factors may facilitate or impede healthy behaviours. The behavioural‐structural dichotomy of cancer prevention can only be resolved by incorporating the ‘Health in All Policies’ perspective at multiple levels (legislation, promotion of healthy choices, health support groups, health education).
Traits and risk factors of post-disaster infectious disease outbreaks: a systematic review.
2021
AbstractInfectious disease outbreaks are increasingly recognised as events that exacerbate impacts or prolong recovery following disasters. Yet, our understanding of the frequency, geography, characteristics and risk factors of post-disaster disease outbreaks globally is lacking. This limits the extent to which disease outbreak risks can be prepared for, monitored and responded to following disasters. Here, we conducted a global systematic review of post-disaster outbreaks and found that outbreaks linked to conflicts and hydrological events were most frequently reported, and most often caused by bacterial and water-borne agents. Lack of adequate WASH facilities and poor housing were commonl…