Infectious diseases caused by ranaviruses (RV, family Iridoviridae) not only affect wild amphibian populations but also agriculture and international animal trade. Although, the prevalence of RV infections and die offs has markedly increased over the last decade, it is still unclear whether these viruses are direct causal agents of extinction or rather are the resulting (secondary) consequences...

The Tenth Annual Conference on Human Retrovirus Testing, sponsored by the Association of State and Territorial Public Health Laboratory Directors (ASTPHLD), was held March 6 to 9, 1995, in Reno, Nevada. The conference, which was attended by more than 300 representatives of public and private sector laboratories as well as test kit manufacturers, emphasized three themes: new human immunodeficien...

Emerging infectious diseases are of increasing concern worldwide and in particular in Europe. In a review, Jones et al. have shown that between 1940 and 2004, the majority of emerging infectious diseases occurred in areas with both a high mobility and high density of population, notably in Western Europe. Furthermore, nearly a third (29%) of the recorded events related to emerging infectious di...

Emerging infectious diseases are the focus of increased attention and even alarm in the scholarly and popular literature. The emergence of new diseases and the resurgence of older and previously recognized infectious diseases both in developing and developed country poses challenges for understanding the ecological web of causation, including social, economic, environmental and biological compo...

cials from the United States and 64 other countries gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, February 29 – March 3, 2004, for the fourth biennial International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases. The aims of the conference were to present the latest scientific information from a variety of disciplines on the new and emerging microbial threats to public health around the world and to encourage and ...

We define data analyses to monitor a change in R, the average number of secondary cases caused by a typical infected individual. The input dataset consists of incident cases partitioned into outbreaks, each initiated from a single index case. We split the input dataset into two successive subsets, to evaluate two successive R values, according to the Bayesian paradigm. We used the Bayes factor ...

The ranges of infectious diseases and vectors are changing in altitude, along with shifts in plant communities and the retreat of alpine glaciers. Additionally, extreme weather events create conditions conducive to clusters of insect-, rodent- and water-borne diseases. Accelerating climate change carries profound threats for public health and society.

The seventh annual Conference on New and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases, April 15–16, 2004, was hosted by the Center for Zoonoses Research and the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The conference featured eight speakers and 31 poster presentations. The conference was opened with a presentation on Yersinia enterocolitica, a gram-negative enteric h...

Evidence now confirms that noncommunicable chronic diseases can stem from infectious agents. Furthermore, at least 13 of 39 recently described infectious agents induce chronic syndromes. Identifying the relationships can affect health across populations, creating opportunities to reduce the impact of chronic disease by preventing or treating infection. As the concept is progressively accepted, ...

Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has set four goals for the agency to accomplish. Each is directly related to issues being discussed at the 2000 ICEID conference. The first goal is to strengthen the science base for public health action. The second goal is to collaborate with healthcare partners for disease prevention; it is essential that in...