Steve Bellan, of the CEID, developed a mathematical model to test the hypothesis that early initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) reduces the risk of drug-sensitive HIV transmission but may increase the transmission of drug-resistant HIV. His model estimates the long-term population-level benefits of ART and determines the scenarios under which earlier ART (treatment […]
Steven Bellan, a biostatistician from UGA’s College of Public Health, developed a quantitative framework for real-time ZIKV risk assessment that captures uncertainty in case reporting, importations, and vector-human transmission dynamics. His findings, published recently in BMC Infectious Diseases, reveal that though large metropolitan regions of the United States (such as the […]
Ecologists at the Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases have developed a model that maps the likelihood of Ebola virus “spillovers”—when the virus jumps from its long-term host to humans or animals such as great apes—across Africa on a month-by-month basis. Their findings, published recently in the journal Emerging […]
Zika virus could be transmitted by more mosquito species than those currently known, according to a new predictive model created by ecologists at the University of Georgia and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Their findings, published today in the journal eLife, offer a list of 26 additional potential candidate […]
Bifurcation delay is a phenomenon that occurs when dynamical systems go through a critical transition. Bifurcation delay occurs because the state of the system may continue to follow the path provided by one basin of attraction even after the stability landscape of the system has changed. For emerging infectious diseases, […]
Bivalves process large volumes of water, leading to their accumulation of bacteria, including potential human pathogens (e.g., vibrios). These bacteria are captured at low efficiencies when freely suspended in the water column, but they also attach to marine aggregates, which are captured with near 100% efficiency. For this reason, and […]
The majority of infectious diseases currently emerging in humans originated in mammals. Yet we still know very little about the global patterns of mammal-to-human pathogen transmission. As a first step, researchers at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and the University of Georgia have assembled world maps of what’s on record […]
Like earthquakes and tsunamis, much of the destructive potential of infectious diseases stems from the fact that they often strike unexpectedly, leaving little time for preparation. This is a problem for better analytics. In this paper, Barbara Han and John Drake argue that developing integrated warning system for predicting emerging pathogens is timely. Such a system will […]
Several studies suggest the potential for climate change to increase malaria incidence in cooler, marginal transmission environments. However, the effect of increasing temperature in warmer regions where conditions currently support endemic transmission has received less attention. We investigate how increases in temperature from optimal conditions (27 °C to 30 °C and 33 °C) interact […]
Preventing future outbreaks of ebolaviruses in humans and other vulnerable animal populations will require identifying the natural reservoirs of filoviruses. Accumulating indirect evidence points to certain bat species as prime suspects. To guide the search for natural filovirus reservoirs, a team involving Barbara Han (Cary Institute), David Hayman (Massey University) […]
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