BACKGROUND Mathematical models have become invaluable management tools for epidemiologists, both shedding light on the mechanisms underlying observed dynamics as well as making quantitative predictions on the effectiveness of different control measures. Here, we explain how substantial biases are introduced by two important, yet largely ignored, assumptions at the core of the vast majority of s...

Animal models for infectious diseases caused by parasites: Leishmaniasis Camila I. de Oliveira, Maria Jânia Teixeira, Régis Gomes, Aldina Barral, Cláudia Brodskyn* Centro de Pesquisa Gonçalo Moniz-Fundação do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Av. Waldemar Falcão, 121, Brotas, Salvador, BA, CEP 41820475, Brazil Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, BA, Brazil Institute of Investi...

0813 Correction: A Shot in the Arm for AIDS Vaccine Research David D. Ho DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020036 In PLoS Medicine, vol 2, issue 2. David D. Ho states that he should have declared as a competing interest that two members of his research team and Ho himself are co-inventors on two candidate vaccines that are in clinical development. For this effort, they also receive funding from the In...

Understanding the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases is important for both biological research and public health applications. It has been widely demonstrated that statistical modeling provides a firm basis for inferring relevant epidemiological quantities from incidence and molecular data. However, the complexity of transmission dynamic models presents two challenges: (1) the likelih...

Infectious diseases are controlled by reducing pathogen replication within or transmission between hosts. Models can reliably evaluate alternative strategies for curtailing transmission, but only if interpersonal mixing is represented realistically. Compartmental modelers commonly use convex combinations of contacts within and among groups of similarly aged individuals, respectively termed pref...

We examined the immune response of a fly as physicians might, by looking at the genesis of diseases caused by microorganisms. Fly infections are complex and there are few simple rules that can predict how an infected fly might fare. As we observed the finer details of the infections, we found that almost every microbe caused a different type of pathology in the fly. Two pattern recognition path...

M uch of microbiological research on infectious agents is increasingly specialized and reductionist, viewing the host as a virtually static environment and thus sharply narrowing the context of the disease under study. We advocate an alternative quantitative approach that enables investigators to go beyond their reliance on conventional and somewhat simplified qualitative terms for describing e...

INTRODUCTION Except skin, the respiratory tract is the only human organ directly affected by (indoor) air. Therefore it is understandable, that all pollutants from the air can evoke any trouble especially in susceptible people. Microbiological contamination of any environment is common and also indoor air or environment is rich in different microbes and it doesn’t make too big difference if pat...