Ebola’s Chain of Infection

A chain of infection is a method for organizing the basic information needed to respond to an epidemic.  I've gathered the best information I've been able to find. As the current epidemic is analyzed, there is no doubt some of the recommendations and basic knowledge will change. The Ebola Virus (EBOV) The Ebola virus is...

The Spotty History of Chicken Pox

For its extreme antiquity, the virus that causes chicken pox has a surprising sparse documented history.  The earliest clear reference to the virus is actually to an emergence of its latent form as shingles, also called zoster. The ancient Greeks called it zoster after the word for girdle, while shingles comes from the latin word...

General Principles of Zoonotic Landscape Epidemiology

Zoonoses, pathogens with animal reservoirs, exist as part of a complex system of interactions between animal reservoirs, vectors, ecological factors and human interaction. Landscape epidemiology has existed as a field of study since Russian epidemiologist E.N. Pavlovsky coined the term and laid the groundwork in the 1960s. Landscape epidemiology is in essence the study of...

The Super-spreading Landscape of Urban Dengue Fever

Dengue Fever is one of the most concerning emerging infectious diseases of the early 21st century. The virus has been spreading with its ever-expanding host, the mosquito Aedes aegypti.  For the last several years there have been naturally acquired cases of dengue fever in the United States and Europe, that are not connected to travel....

Siberian Mummy Yields 300-year-old Smallpox DNA

It was the mass grave that got their attention. Four bodies crammed into one casket, with one child outside but with the casket. Multiple graves are not common in Yakutia, Siberia. Examination of the late 17th to early 18th century mummies indicates that burial came quickly after death. The casket contains one adult male over...

When Yellow Fever Came to the Americas

In the early Americas, nothing scared people more than when Yellow Jack came knocking at the door of their city. Yellow Jack, or as we know it better today Yellow Fever, has rightly been called the plague of the Americas. It has long been assumed that yellow fever came to the Americas with its vector,...

Contagions Round-up 24: The Links of Summer

Summer hasn't been the kindest to the blogosphere (or at least parts of it I cover). It seems unnaturally quiet. Hopefully this means some of the regular bloggers have big projects going on that we will eventually hear about.  Still, covering over a month of posts, there is quite a bit here for your mid-summer...

What makes a Super-Spreader?

Parameters that should be theoretically equal often aren't so in the real world. Ideally everyone should have the same potential to transmit an infection during a given outbreak, but it has long been observed that this isn't true. Super-spreaders play an extraordinary role in driving outbreaks of infectious disease. A super-spreader is a person who...

Contagions Round-up 20: Past is Prologue in Science too!

Congratulations to Wonders & Marvels for winning the Cliopatria Award for Best History Group Blog of 2011 and to Lindsey Fitzharris of The Chirurgeon's Apprentice who won the Cliopatria Award for Best History Individual Blog of 2011. What a year for history of medicine! Starting with Lindsey's latest post, let's get this round-up rolling. The Chirurgenon's...