Researchers and clinicians have for several decades focused epidemiologic, basic biomedical and clinical investigation on preterm birth, low birth weight, and numerous sequelae of untimely birth. As the problem has been examined from the expertise of various specialists and from separate but at times overlapping disciplines, different etiologic elements have emerged as important in the genesis ...

Brazil’s large size (more than 8.5 million km2 and 150 million population) and inadequate public health infrastructure pose a considerable challenge in assessing the status of emerging infectious diseases. Under the current system, most infectious diseases are not notifiable. In diseases for which notification is required, underreporting is common and varies widely by region and disease, and no...

Infectious diseases is a broad discipline that is almost unique in contemporary medicine with its ability to cure and prevent disease, to identify specific disease causes (microbes), and to deal with diverse, sometimes massive outbreaks. The value of the infectious disease practitioner is now magnified by the crisis of antibiotic resistance, the expanding consequences of international travel, t...

The Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) system is the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) in humans, and all knowledge on this system is of great interest to the field of medical sciences. HLA has become an important tool for understanding the pathogenesis of various infectious diseases; the alleles or HLA haplotypes inherited by an individual can predict several risk and protective factors relate...

drome and the US smallpox vaccination program have demonstrated the vulnerability of healthcare workers to occupationally acquired infectious diseases. However, despite acknowledgment of risk, the occupational death rate for healthcare workers is unknown. In contrast, the death rate for other professions with occupational risk, such as police officer or firefighter, has been well defined. With ...

Although many psychiatric diseases have somatic manifestations, some focus on fears or delusions of infection. When a patient with a psychiatric basis for an apparent infection presents to an infectious disease physician, the physician may find the problem confusing, amusing, and ultimately frustrating until the psychiatric basis for disease is recognized. Some of these psychiatric disorders ca...

Genetic diseases conferring resistance to infectious diseases Isabelle C. Withrock , Stephen J. Anderson , Matthew A. Jefferson , Garrett R. McCormack , Gregory S.A. Mlynarczyk , Aron Nakama , Jennifer K. Lange , Carrie A. Berg , Sreemoyee Acharya , Matthew L. Stock , Melissa S. Lind , K.C. Luna , Naveen C. Kondru , Sireesha Manne , Bhavika B. Patel , Bierlein M. de la Rosa , Kuei-Pin Huang , S...