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Seminars in Immunopathology Jan 2024The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant economic and health impact worldwide. It also reinforced the misperception that only viruses can pose a threat to human... (Review)
Review
The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant economic and health impact worldwide. It also reinforced the misperception that only viruses can pose a threat to human existence, overlooking that bacteria (e.g., plague and cholera) have severely haunted and shaped the course of human civilization. While the world is preparing for the next viral pandemic, it is again overlooking a silent one: antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This review proposes to show the impact of bacterial infections on civilization to remind the pandemic potential. The work will also discuss a few examples of how bacteria can mutate risking global spread and devastating outcomes, the effect on the global burden, and the prophylactic and therapeutic measures. Indeed, AMR is dramatically increasing and if the trend is not reversed, it has the potential to quickly turn into the most important health problem worldwide.
Topics: Animals; Humans; Anti-Bacterial Agents; Bacteria; Bacterial Infections; COVID-19; Drug Resistance, Bacterial; Pandemics; SARS-CoV-2; Global Burden of Disease
PubMed: 38078911
DOI: 10.1007/s00281-023-00997-1 -
Topics in Cognitive Science Apr 2024How did humans become clever enough to live in nearly every major ecosystem on earth, create vaccines against deadly plagues, explore the oceans depths, and routinely... (Review)
Review
How did humans become clever enough to live in nearly every major ecosystem on earth, create vaccines against deadly plagues, explore the oceans depths, and routinely traverse the globe at 30,000 feet in aluminum tubes while nibbling on roasted almonds? Drawing on recent developments in our understanding of human evolution, we consider what makes us distinctively smarter than other animals. Contrary to conventional wisdom, human brilliance emerges not from our innate brainpower or raw computational capacities, but from the sharing of information in communities and networks over generations. We review how larger, more diverse, and more optimally interconnected networks of minds give rise to faster innovation and how the cognitive products of this cumulative cultural evolutionary process feedback to make us individually "smarter"-in the sense of being better at meeting the challenges and problems posed by our societies and socioecologies. Here, we consider not only how cultural evolution supplies us with "thinking tools" (like counting systems and fractions) but also how it has shaped our ontologies (e.g., do germs and witches exist?) and epistemologies, including our notions of what constitutes a "good reason" or "good evidence" (e.g., are dreams a source of evidence?). Building on this, we consider how cultural evolution has organized and distributed cultural knowledge and cognitive tasks among subpopulations, effectively shifting both thinking and production to the level of the community, population, or network, resulting in collective information processing and group decisions. Cultural evolution can turn mindless mobs into wise crowds by facilitating and constraining cognition through a wide variety of epistemic institutions-political, legal, and scientific. These institutions process information and aid better decision-making by suppressing or encouraging the use of different cultural epistemologies and ontologies.
Topics: Animals; Humans; Ecosystem; Cognition; Cultural Evolution
PubMed: 37086053
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12656 -
Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) Nov 2023Malaria, a devastating disease transmitted by mosquitoes, continues to plague many regions worldwide, affecting millions of lives annually [...].
Malaria, a devastating disease transmitted by mosquitoes, continues to plague many regions worldwide, affecting millions of lives annually [...].
PubMed: 38133274
DOI: 10.3390/pathogens12121389 -
Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy Sep 2023mRNA vaccines have emerged as highly effective strategies in the prophylaxis and treatment of diseases, thanks largely although not totally to their extraordinary... (Review)
Review
mRNA vaccines have emerged as highly effective strategies in the prophylaxis and treatment of diseases, thanks largely although not totally to their extraordinary performance in recent years against the worldwide plague COVID-19. The huge superiority of mRNA vaccines regarding their efficacy, safety, and large-scale manufacture encourages pharmaceutical industries and biotechnology companies to expand their application to a diverse array of diseases, despite the nonnegligible problems in design, fabrication, and mode of administration. This review delves into the technical underpinnings of mRNA vaccines, covering mRNA design, synthesis, delivery, and adjuvant technologies. Moreover, this review presents a systematic retrospective analysis in a logical and well-organized manner, shedding light on representative mRNA vaccines employed in various diseases. The scope extends across infectious diseases, cancers, immunological diseases, tissue damages, and rare diseases, showcasing the versatility and potential of mRNA vaccines in diverse therapeutic areas. Furthermore, this review engages in a prospective discussion regarding the current challenge and potential direction for the advancement and utilization of mRNA vaccines. Overall, this comprehensive review serves as a valuable resource for researchers, clinicians, and industry professionals, providing a comprehensive understanding of the technical aspects, historical context, and future prospects of mRNA vaccines in the fight against various diseases.
Topics: Humans; Prospective Studies; Retrospective Studies; COVID-19; Adjuvants, Immunologic; mRNA Vaccines
PubMed: 37726283
DOI: 10.1038/s41392-023-01579-1 -
Viruses Aug 2023Antibacterial resistance is a renewed public health plague in modern times, and the COVID-19 pandemic has rekindled this problem. Changes in antibiotic prescribing... (Review)
Review
Antibacterial resistance is a renewed public health plague in modern times, and the COVID-19 pandemic has rekindled this problem. Changes in antibiotic prescribing behavior, misinformation, financial hardship, environmental impact, and governance gaps have generally enhanced the misuse and improper access to antibiotics during the COVID-19 pandemic. These determinants, intersected with antibacterial resistance in the current pandemic, may amplify the potential for a future antibacterial resistance pandemic. The occurrence of infections with multidrug-resistant (MDR), extensively drug-resistant (XDR), difficult-to-treat drug-resistant (DTR), carbapenem-resistant (CR), and pan-drug-resistant (PDR) bacteria is still increasing. The aim of this review is to highlight the state of the art of antibacterial resistance worldwide, focusing on the most important pathogens, namely , , and , and their resistance to the most common antibiotics.
Topics: Humans; Anti-Bacterial Agents; COVID-19; Pandemics; Carbapenems; Acinetobacter baumannii
PubMed: 37766250
DOI: 10.3390/v15091843 -
Scientific Reports Jul 2023The incidence of plague has rebounded in the Americas, Asia, and Africa alongside rapid globalization and climate change. Previous studies have shown local climate to...
The incidence of plague has rebounded in the Americas, Asia, and Africa alongside rapid globalization and climate change. Previous studies have shown local climate to have significant nonlinear effects on plague dynamics among rodent communities. We analyzed an 18-year database of plague, spanning 1998 to 2015, in the foci of Mongolia and China to trace the associations between marmot plague and climate factors. Our results suggested a density-dependent effect of precipitation and a geographic location-dependent effect of temperature on marmot plague. That is, a significantly positive relationship was evident between risk of plague and precipitation only when the marmot density exceeded a certain threshold. The geographical heterogeneity of the temperature effect and the contrasting slopes of influence for the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) and other regions in the study (nQTP) were primarily related to diversity of climate and landscape types.
Topics: Animals; Plague; Marmota; Mongolia; China; Tibet; Rodentia
PubMed: 37488160
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-38966-1