Origins of major human infectious diseases.pdfVIP

Origins of major human infectious diseases N.D. Wolfe, C.P. Dunavan, J. Diamond Nature 2007 Questions of interest • Where did these major infectious diseases come from? • Why do most of them originate from the Old World? • How does a disease progress from existing exclusively in animal pops into human pops? • Focus: unicellular microbial pathogens Diseases considered in the study: ▫ 8 temperate: hepatitis B, influenza A, measles, pertussis, rotavirus A, syphiis, tetanus and TB ▫ 9 tropical: AIDS, Chagus, cholera, DHF, E. and W. African sleeping sickness, malaria, leishmaniasis ▫ 8 others: diphtheria, mumps, plague, rubella, smallpox, typhoid and typhus, tropical yellow fever Animal pathogen human pathogen in 5 evolutionary stages • 1. Microbe is present in animals but not humans • 2. Animal pathogen is transmitted to humans but not between humans (anthrax, rabies, etc) Prof. Durham’s ebola • 3. animal pathogens have a few cycles of secondary transmission in humans but soon die out (ebola, Marburg, etc) • Stage 4: ▫ Disease exists in animals humans can get infected through contact w/ the sylvatic cycle ▫ but also, the disease can be transmitted between humans w/o animal hosts ▫ Three substages: a) sylvatic cycle more important than direct human to human spread (Chagas disease, yellow fever) b) both sylvatic and direct transmission important (dengue) c) spread mostly through humans (typhus, influenza, cholera) • Stage 5: pathogen is exclusive to humans ▫ Malaria, measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox and syphilis ▫ 2 ways pathogen became confined to humans: A)ancestral pathogen already