Questions tagged [infectious-diseases]
The infectious-diseases tag has no usage guidance.
109 questions
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Does the species number of microorganisms in the genital tract significantly increase through an indirect sexual tree?
Let's say:
The indirect sexual relationship tree (assuming condoms are not used) can be huge.
The A at the tree end had only one sex partner B for a period (e.g. a few months and thus joined the ...
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What particular genetic mutations gave Europeans increased resistance to smallpox?
It's widely stated that a large chunk of the Native American population was wiped out by diseases (Notably smallpox) introduced by European colonists to which the natives did not have a resistance. My ...
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When is it useful to give a vaccine post-infection?
I was reading this answer about the rabies vaccine, which explains that giving the vaccine post-exposure is effective because the vaccine stimulates a more rapid immune response than the infection ...
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How do eradicated diseases make a comeback?
It's in the news this week that a case of polio was encountered in Gaza, the first case there in 25 years. The conflict between Israel and Hamas is blamed for reduced vaccination, so children are more ...
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Is it physically impossible for a male Anopheles mosquito to bite?
I know that malaria is spread through female Anopheles mosquitos as they require a blood meal to survive and that male ones do not bite and they survive off of nectar, etc.
But is it physically ...
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Does Plasmodium affect the female Anopheles mosquito?
I was studying the life cycle of Plasmodium, and I read that the infectious form (sporozoites) is what causes malaria in humans. I also read that this form resides in the salivary glands of the female ...
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Understanding infection rate of a complex network
Suppose we have a complex network of people and the spread of a disease is modelled as a branching process (Diekmann et al. 1998)
The rate of infection of the complex network is:
$r = \tau(n-2)-g$
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Was there a flu season in paleolithic times?
In temperate climates, flu viruses rise and recede with winter. This is for a number of reasons, including lack of vitamin D production in darkness (which weakens the immune system), dry air (humidity ...
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Superbugs in eusocial animals
I am not a biologist, and I'm interested in eusocial animals, and the porous habitats in which they live. I know few facts about diseases in these animals: I know some interesting instances of viruses,...
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What percentage of HIV cases are caused by each of the following pathways?
Most studies of STI focuses on sexual intercourses. For example one study shows that approximately 70% of HIV is caused by male-male intercourse, and 20% is caused by heterosexual sexes.
However, I ...
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Beneficial effects of the fungi of a termite mound on the diseases suffered by the termites
My motivation to join this Biology Stack Exchange is the article by David Pride that I've read from the Spanish edition of Scientific American, that's Investigación y Ciencia. The article is [1], and ...
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Are there any examples of social animals which show collective behavioral change in response to disease?
When Covid-19 happened, collective behavioral changes were taken in order to curb the spread of the virus by the human race. Do things like these happen in other animals as well? Like isolating a ...
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Are there flies that can spray their eggs while flying?
While I was reading a few articles about parasitic infections caused by flies, to be specific Myiasis, I read something saying that some flies can spray their eggs when they are flying around their ...
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How do predators avoid "food poisoning"?
How do predators avoid becoming ill in cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery and similar diseases?
They aren't exactly careful when eating a kill, especially pack animals where there can be quite a fight over ...
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Could hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) be used as a 'disinfectant' on hospital patients that are in contact with SARS-CoV-2?
Hydrogen peroxide kills harmful pathogens and various forms of bacteria by destroying their cell walls, through a process called oxidation. However, since SARS-CoV-2 is acellular; not composed of a ...
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How does natural selection interacts with sustained mask use?
At leasts in some European countries, the number of respiratory (non-covid) infectious diseases on children this term is higher than last year and similar to pre-pandemic years in spite of social ...
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How does the first organism infected by a disease get infected?
How does a micro-organism causing some communicable disease infect the first organism it infected?
I was reading about HIV, when I found that HIV has jumped from chimpanzees to human beings. But, how ...
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How typhoid fever severe case's intestine perforation occur? (non trauma)
In typhoid severe case, intestinal perforation occurs. As stated here
[4, 6]. Intestinal perforation is a serious complication of typhoid fever
My question here is, how does the bacteria (Salmonella ...
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Fluctuations in disease burden of respiratory viruses (especially influenza/coronaviruses)
Compared to peaks in terms of disease burden (morbidity and mortality, or incidence of severely symptomatic cases and deaths caused by a viral strain within a population), is the relatively light ...
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Why did Rivers replace Koch's postulates?
In 1937, Rivers introduced a new set of postulates that were meant to replace those formulated by Koch.
However, I couldn't find an article (or other scientific literature) that describes why Koch's ...
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Why do OX5034 GM mosquitos require the presence of tetracycline to survive? What does the drug do in this case?
I'm confused. Debug Fresno; why are the released mosquitos said to be sterile? from 2017 addresses male mosquitos released with a bacteria that will affect fertility of females after mating. They are ...
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Acquiring Covid-19 vaccination through kissing with viral vector vaccinated person
The mechanism of COVID-19 viral vector based vaccines (AstraZeneca - Vaxzevria, Johnsen, Sputnik V - Gam-COVID-Vac, Johnson & Johnson - Janssen, etc. ) is delivering the genetic information of the ...
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HPV. How do viruses persist outside the body?
The main route of transmission of human papillomavirus (HPV) is generally believed to be sexual. While fomites have been postulated for inexplicable infections, sexual health professionals regularly ...
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Loss of taste and smell during a SARS-CoV-2 infection
In France the loss of taste and smell (la perte du goût et de l'odorat) is considered as one of the key symptoms of a SARS-CoV-2 infection (although googling shows that it is considered less ...
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Do partial (nighttime) curfews curb the spread of epidemics (and via which mechanisms)? [closed]
Do partial (e.g., nighttime) curfews curb the spread of epidemics?
What is the (epidemiological) mechanism by which partial curfews curb the spread of epidemics?
Is there evidence from past or present ...
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Minimum and maximum exposure to virus
Is it possible to say that there is a maximum exposure time for the virus so that even an exposure time beyond that - will leave us with the same chances of infection?
If so, is there a way to ...
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COVID-19 infection data when partitioning to communities
Suppose we think of the disease in a certain country as follows.
We have a set of "communities" $C_1,\dots,C_k$ in the country where $k$ is some small constant, say $10$. Each individual is ...
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Why do some vaccines lose their efficacy with time?
Why do some vaccines lose with time their efficacy?
The two obvious examples that I have in mind are influenza and tetanus. The former case is clear, as influenza virus undergoes frequent gene ...
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What is the probability of virus undergoing a specific dangerous mutation? [closed]
Non-biologist here so apologies if the question is violating too many of the community standards for asking a question in the forum.
What got me thinking was imagining how much more terrifying the ...
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In terms of Prions is there a possibility, that other proteins apart from PRPC could be misfolded [closed]
This is as from research PRPC seems to be the cause of all Prion related diseases. Thank you
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How good are the hematologic parameters (e,g, IL6 or others) in predicting which patients will develop a severe COVID-19 disease?
Clinical implications of the hematologic profile of COVID-19 patients including cytokine storm, coagulation profile and thrombophilic complications are starting to be recognized. Hypercoagulability ...
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SARS-COV-2 detectability versus viability
This week (#47 of 2020) two meta-reviews were published in the Lancet.
Ct values and infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces, a brief review published on 19 November in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, ...
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Why do diseases in the tap water of developing countries affect people from developed countries more?
My siblings and I went abroad to a country that doesn't have drinkable tap water, but we did not know this at the time as the people who lived there used to drink it all the time with no issues.
One ...
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Reason for partially double-stranded DNA of Hepatitis B virus
According to my school biology textbook and also Wikipedia, hepatitis B is the only Hepatitis virus to possess partially double-stranded DNA.
I found an image from here
What is the reason for the ...
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COVID-19 deaths by year of birth?
Are there (global, country, etc.) data of COVID-19 deaths (or hospitalization) by year of birth? I was able to found them only by "age group", the meaning of this being usually an interval ...
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Did most pandemics originate from Asia/China?
This question may be on the borderline of well-posed-ness. Let me ask it. Then please tell me if or where it can be improved.
Is it statistically true that the majority of the pandemics or epidemics ...
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Why are diseases generally specific to a particular species
"Zoonosis" is the process of transmitting a disease from an infected animal to a human. This suggests that animal-to-human transmission is not common. HIV is believed to have first spread to humans ...
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How to model social structure in SIR models
I refer to J.H. Jones' Notes on R0.
More details in this question at Mathematics SE: How does the reproduction number depend on characteristics of the physical contact graph of a population?
The ...
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The role of duration of infectiousness in SIR models
I refer to J.H. Jones' Notes on R0.
The basic SIR model - as described in Jones' Notes - considers three factors that make up the reproduction number:
$\tau$ = the transmissibility (i.e., ...
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Do we know if dogs are asymptomatic transmiters of sars-cov-2?
Dogs do not use mask when going for a walk nor they observe the security distance. On the contrary, they frequently join their noses, and put their noses where other dogs had put them before or had ...
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Because we don't live as closely to livestock, are we at a greater or lesser risk of plagues?
Give recent events, some people have called for the 'wet markets' in China to be shut down, (for many reasons) but largely because it is likely the source of the recent plague outbreak, due to the ...
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How is the carrying capacity of a logistic growth model calculated?
I am reading a book in epidemiology where the carrying capacity for a standard logistic growth rate is given by
K = (b - delta) / gamma
where:
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How antibodies are produced in our body against intracellular proteins of infectious bacteria?
When an infectious agent invades our body, then surface antigens of the infectious agent are detected by our immune system and B-cells get activated. However, we do have antibodies in our blood ...
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Why does the SARS-CoV2 virus not remain infectious forever? Or does it?
Given that the majority of biologists do not currently consider viruses to be alive, a virus can never die. It can, however, get destroyed by long exposures to soapy water, alcohol, and apparently ...
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Can swarming locusts act as a vector for any human pathogens?
What human pathogens can the locusts currently swarming in Africa act as a vector for?
E.g. can the locust swarm 'become a reservoir for' SARS-CoV-2? Measles? Ebola?
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Are specific primers or detectors, or both, used in COVID-19 tests?
I am trying to learn about the rRT-PCR testing procedure used to test for COVID-19, but I am slightly confused on one point. Are highly specific primers used with a non-specific detector, or are ...
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How likely is to develop an infection from a single virion entering a single cell? [closed]
Is there any research (including mathematical or computational modelling) regarding how likely it is to infect an organism starting from a single virion entering a single cell?
I am interested in any ...
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Can an infectious diseases come from a plant?
Coronavirus, HIV, 1918 Flu, etc. They all come from animals. Do any infectious diseases (in humans) come from plants? More specifically, are there viruses that infect plants that can mutate to infect ...
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Do we know of any "species ending bugs"?
Are we aware of a "bug" (virus, bacterium, prion, ...) that has completely exterminated an entire species? Either through direct observation or maybe some form of archeological evidence? If not, are ...
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Are there any documented instances of coronaviruses being directly transmitted from bats to humans?
Many human coronaviruses have ancestral host origins in species of bat. However, all instances I am aware of identified other animals as intermediary vectors:
SARS-CoV: Human ← Palm Civet / Raccoon ← ...
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