Publications related to Emerging infectious disease

Monitoring an Emergent Pathogen at Low Incidence in Wastewater Using qPCR: Mpox in Switzerland

Wastewater-based epidemiology offers a complementary approach to clinical case-based surveillance of emergent diseases and can help identify regions with infected people to prioritize clinical surveillance strategies. However, tracking emergent diseases in ...

2024

The role of spatial epidemiology to support public health policies : case studies applied to health promotion, noncommunicable and infectious diseases in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland

Anaïs Laurence Ladoy

In a context of escalating public health challenges, including the rise of chronic diseases, the impact of climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic, certain populations bear a disproportionate burden. As a result, there is an urgent need to develop public ...

EPFL2024

Microfluidic systems for infectious disease diagnostics

Martinus Gijs, Thomas Lehnert

Microorganisms, encompassing both uni- and multicellular entities, exhibit remarkable diversity as omnipresent life forms in nature. They play a pivotal role by supplying essential components for sustaining biological processes across diverse ecosystems, i ...

Royal Soc Chemistry2024

Inactivation of influenza A virus in expiratory droplets and aerosol particles and the associated physicochemical drivers

Aline Laetitia Schaub

Influenza is an infectious respiratory illness caused by influenza viruses. Every year, it causes up to one billion cases of disease worldwide. Despite its high disease burden, the transmission pathway of influenza remains subject to debate. There is incre ...

EPFL2024

A common NFKB1 variant detected through antibody analysis in UK Biobank predicts risk of infection and allergy

Jacques Fellay, Flavia Aurelia Shoko Hodel

Infectious agents contribute significantly to the global burden of diseases through both acute infection and their chronic sequelae. We leveraged the UK Biobank to identify genetic loci that influence humoral immune response to multiple infections. From 45 ...

2024

Challenges of COVID-19 Case Forecasting in the US, 2020-2021

Joseph Chadi Benoit Lemaitre, Pan Xu, Weitong Zhang, Wei Cao, Myungjin Kim, Shan Yu, Xinyi Li, Lei Gao

During the COVID-19 pandemic, forecasting COVID-19 trends to support planning and response was a priority for scientists and decision makers alike. In the United States, COVID-19 forecasting was coordinated by a large group of universities, companies, and ...

Public Library Science2024

Using Negative Control Populations to Assess Unmeasured Confounding and Direct Effects

Mats Julius Stensrud

Sometimes treatment effects are absent in a subgroup of the population. For example, penicillin has no effect on severe symptoms in individuals infected by resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and codeine has no effect on pain in individuals with certain polym ...

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins2024

Stay close, but not too close: aerial image analysis reveals patterns of social distancing in seal colonies

Devis Tuia, Benjamin Alexander Kellenberger

Many species aggregate in dense colonies. Species-specific spatial patterns provide clues about how colonies are shaped by various (a)biotic factors, including predation, temperature regulation or disease transmission. Using aerial imagery, we examined the ...

2023

Multivalent Virucidal Antivirals: Synthesis, Mechanisms of Action, and Immune-stimulating Effects

Yong Zhu

Viruses initiate invasion by binding to cell surface glycoproteins. Materials mimicking the carbohydrate motifs of these glycoproteins, such as heparan sulfate (HS) and sialic acid (SA) can block viral attachment and inhibit the infection. Multivalent disp ...

EPFL2023

Host-Pathogen Interactions Through the Genomic Lens

Zhi Ming Xu

Hosts and pathogens are involved in a long-standing evolutionary arms race characterized by successive rounds of evolution. Specifically, while hosts evolve resistance against infections, pathogens adapt to re-establish virulence. Since the signatures of t ...

EPFL2023

Poloxamers Have Vaccine-Adjuvant Properties by Increasing Dissemination of Particulate Antigen at Distant Lymph Nodes

Myriam Isabelle Lamrayah

Vaccine technology is still facing challenges regarding some infectious diseases, which can be addressed by innovative drug delivery systems. In particular, nanoparticle-based vaccines combined with new types of adjuvants are actively explored as a platfor ...

MDPI2023

Secondary Structures of MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2 Spike Proteins Revealed by Infrared Vibrational Spectroscopy

Marta Di Fabrizio

All coronaviruses are characterized by spike glycoproteins whose S1 subunits contain the receptor binding domain (RBD). The RBD anchors the virus to the host cellular membrane to regulate the virus transmissibility and infectious process. Although the prot ...

MDPI2023

DNA modifications impact natural transformation of Acinetobacter baumannii

Melanie Blokesch, Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Christian Iseli, Alexandre Lemopoulos, Nina Vesel

Acinetobacter baumannii is a dangerous nosocomial pathogen, especially due to its ability to rapidly acquire new genetic traits, including antibiotic resistance genes (ARG). In A. baumannii, natural competence for transformation, one of the primary modes o ...

2023

Back-to-Africa introductions of Mycobacterium tuberculosis as the main cause of tuberculosis in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Jacques Fellay, Zhi Ming Xu

In settings with high tuberculosis (TB) endemicity, distinct genotypes of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) often differ in prevalence. However, the factors leading to these differences remain poorly understood. Here we studied the MTBC populat ...

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE2023

A DNA biosensors-based microfluidic platform for attomolar real-time detection of unamplified SARS-CoV-2 virus

Sandrine Gerber, Mounir Driss Mensi, Céline Marie Anne Journot, Perrine Agnes Edith Robin, Lucas Mayoraz, Igor Stefanini, Roberto Robortella

The emergence of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) arose the need for rapid, accurate and massive virus detection methods to control the spread of infectious diseases. In this work, a device, deployable in non-medical environments, has been developed for the ...

2023

Virtual Safety Assistant: An Efficient Tool for Ensuring Safety During Covid-19 Pandemic

Daniel Thalmann

Using intelligent virtual assistants for controlling employee population in workspaces is a research area that remains unexplored. This paper presents a novel application of virtual humans to enforce Covid-19 safety measures in a corporate workplace. For t ...

SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG2022

How to: Diagnose inborn errors of intrinsic and innate immunity to viral, bacterial, mycobacterial, and fungal infections

Alessandro Borghesi

Background: Inborn errors of intrinsic and innate immunity constitute the focus of a growing research field that investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying susceptibility to infections previously not considered part of the spectrum of inborn errors o ...

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2022

Monocyte-derived macrophages aggravate pulmonary vasculitis via cGAS/STING/IFN-mediated nucleic acid sensing

Andrea Ablasser

Kessler et al. identify aberrant DNA recognition by cGAS/STING and IFN-I production by inflammatory macrophages as a driver of severe ANCA-associated vasculitis. Pharmacological interventions blocking this pathway ameliorate disease and accelerate recovery ...

ROCKEFELLER UNIV PRESS2022

A Phylogeny-aware GWAS Framework to Correct for Heritable Pathogen Effects on Infectious Disease Traits

Jacques Fellay, Christian Axel Wandall Thorball

Infectious diseases are particularly challenging for genome-wide association studies (GWAS) because genetic effects from two organisms (pathogen and host) can influence a trait. Traditional GWAS assume individual samples are independent observations. Howev ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2022

Human- and machine-centred designs of molecules and materials for sustainability and decarbonization

Sokseiha Muy, Tian Xie

Data-driven approaches based on high-throughput capabilities and machine learning hold promise in revolutionizing human-centred materials discovery for sustainability and decarbonization. This Review examines the strengths and limitations of different trad ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022