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Yellow fever virus (YFV) is the prototype member of the Flaviviridae (Latin flavus , “yellow,” after the jaundice seen with the disease) family of viruses. The virus causes a viral hemorrhagic fever, a systemic illness characterized by high viremia, hepatic, renal, and myocardial injury; hemorrhage; and high lethality. A highly effective vaccine (17D), developed in 1936, is widely used to protect travelers to and residents of…
Maria. A. Nagel, MD Professor Neurology University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora Colorado United States Professor Ophthalmology University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora Colorado United States INTRODUCTION History of Disease Varicella zoster virus (VZV) is an exclusively human alphaherpesvirus that produces varicella (chickenpox) on primary infection, establishes latency in ganglionic neurons, then reactivates later in life to produce herpes zoster (HZ; shingles). Historically, varicella…
INTRODUCTION History of Disease Typhoid fever is an acute generalized infection of the mononuclear phagocyte system, intestinal lymphoid tissue, and gallbladder caused by Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi. A broad spectrum of clinical illness can ensue, with more severe forms being characterized by persisting high fever, abdominal discomfort, malaise, and headache. In the preantibiotic era, the disease ran its course over several weeks and was accompanied by…
Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is currently the only licensed vaccine available against tuberculosis (TB). The vaccine has been given to over 4 billion people; yet, TB still poses a major public health threat globally. Approximately 25% of the world’s population has evidence of current or prior infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis , with an estimated 10 million new cases of TB disease and 1.4 million deaths in 2019…
Tickborne encephalitis virus (TBEV) is a member of the genus Flavivirus , family Flaviviridae, which comprises approximately 70 viruses that cause many serious diseases, including dengue, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile virus neuroinvasive disease, and yellow fever. TBEV is one of the major human pathogenic flaviviruses, with the disease being caused by three subtypes termed European or Central European (TBEV-Eu), Far Eastern or Russian Spring Summer encephalitis…
INTRODUCTION History of Disease Tetanus is unique among vaccine-preventable diseases in that it is not communicable. Clostridium tetani , the causative agent of tetanus, is widespread in the environment; many animals, in addition to humans, can harbor and excrete the organism and its spores. When spores of C. tetani are introduced into the anaerobic conditions found in devitalized tissue or punctures, they germinate to vegetative bacilli…
HISTORY OF DISEASE In 1887, Nocard and Mollereau were first to distinguish streptococci that caused epidemics of mastitis in dairy cattle as Streptococcus agalactiae (“without milk”). Decades later, in 1933, Lancefield classified β-hemolytic streptococci into groups based on cell wall carbohydrate antigens and later demonstrated that S. agalactiae from bovine and human sources, although phenotypically and biochemically distinct, belonged to group B. A scant 5 years…
INTRODUCTION Streptococcus pyogenes (group A β-hemolytic Streptococcus [GAS]) is a Gram-positive bacterial pathogen that has presented an ongoing challenge to scientists and clinicians throughout modern medical history. Descriptions of epidemics of fulminant illnesses in previously healthy individuals date back to the 1600s. , Until the early 1900s, scarlet fever and acute rheumatic fever (ARF) were major causes of child death in the United States and Europe.…
# Attempts to reduce Staphylococcus aureus disease through vaccination date back to at least 1902, but this pathogen may be unrivaled among others in the sheer scale and scope of unsuccessful vaccine attempts. These challenges have inevitably led many to wonder whether a vaccine against Staphylococcus aureus is an attainable goal. This chapter will discuss the clinical importance of this major bacterial pathogen, the urgent need…
The World Health Assembly certified the eradication of smallpox on May 8, 1980, an event that many hoped would consign smallpox to history. However, the former deputy director of the Soviet Union’s BioPreparat activities has written that manufacturing facilities had been constructed that were capable of producing smallpox virus in ton quantities. These claims also specified that the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology (the…
RUBELLA “German measles is extremely infectious. People catch it very easily. And there’s one thing about it that you’ve got to remember. If a woman contracts it in the first four months of pregnancy it may have a terribly serious effect. It may cause an unborn child to be born blind or to be born mentally affected.” Agatha Christie, in “The Mirror Crack’d From Side To…
## Rotaviruses were the leading cause of severe dehydrating diarrhea in infants and young children throughout the world before rotavirus vaccines became available. Most children were infected by the time they reached 2 to 3 years of age. , Even in developed nations, where standards of hygiene are high, rotavirus was the most common cause of severe infant diarrhea. In the United States, before the introduction…
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of hospitalization for pneumonia and other lower respiratory tract illnesses (LRTI) in infants and children worldwide. In the United States, it is estimated that approximately 150,000 infants are hospitalized annually with RSV pneumonia or bronchiolitis. A review of national databases in the U.S. estimated RSV mortality rates in children at approximately 3–4/10,000 admissions, or approximately 50–160 deaths per…
“…In the realm of fantasy, consider the statement of Aristotle (otherwise a great philosopher) that only animals and not humans die of rabies… perhaps, optimistically speaking, the 21st century will bring us a glimmer of hope for the successful treatment of human rabies….” Hilary Koprowski, Rabies in the face of the 21st century. Zoon Publ Hlth. 2009;56:258–261. Ever the optimist, the late Hilary Koprowski’s dream of…
INTRODUCTION History of the Disease Poliomyelitis probably has affected humankind since ancient times, as demonstrated by the depiction in an Egyptian stele dated between 1403 and 1365 BCE, of a “crippled young man, apparently a priest, with a withered and shortened right leg, and with his foot held in a typical equinus position characteristic of prior flaccid paralysis.” However, it was not until 1789 that Michael…
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION Not since the introduction of the rabies vaccine by Louis Pasteur was the public interest in vaccines stirred as much as by the development and testing of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), and not since Albert Einstein had a scientist received the public adulation accorded to Jonas Salk, the vaccine’s inventor. Contributing to this phenomenon was the rise of poliomyelitis as an epidemic disease, its…
BACKGROUND Since the late 19th century, the study of Streptococcus pneumoniae and pneumococcal infections has occupied a central position in developing a scientific basis for controlling infectious diseases. , The organism was first isolated and grown in the laboratory almost simultaneously by Sternberg and Pasteur in 1881. During the next decade, the pneumococcus was shown to be the principal cause of lobar pneumonia. To this day,…
The original demonstration by Avery and Goebel, in 1929, that capsular polysaccharides were immunogenic when linked to a protein, and 60 years later, the demonstrated efficacy of Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) conjugate vaccines in the 1990s (see Chapter 25) led to an extraordinary public health intervention in the year 2000 when conjugated pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccines were introduced for the prevention of pneumococcal disease in infants.…
E. Diane Williamson, PhD, DSc Defence Science and Technology Laboratory CBR Division Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Porton Down, Salisbury Wiltshire United Kingdom Petra C.F. Oyston, PhD, BSc(Hons) Defence Science and Technology Laboratory CBR Division Dstl Porton Down, Salisbury Wiltshire United Kingdom HISTORY OF PLAGUE PANDEMICS During the last two millennia, the bacterium Yersinia pestis has been responsible for social and economic devastation on a scale…
INTRODUCTION History of Disease Pertussis (whooping cough) is a bacterial respiratory infection caused by Bordetella pertussis, a Gram-negative bacillus. Its major manifestation is a protracted cough that lasts many weeks, marked by characteristic intense paroxysms that often terminate in an inspiratory “whoop.” Absent vaccination, nearly all children will contract pertussis. In 1502, the Persian physician Bahaodowle Razi reported three outbreaks of a disease, more common in…