307 papers
Epidemiology is the study of how diseases spread through populations and what factors influence their patterns. Rather than focusing on individual patients, this field examines broader trends to identify outbreaks, track transmission, and guide public health decisions. By analyzing data on infection rates and risk factors, researchers work to prevent future health crises and protect communities worldwide.
On Gist.Science, we process every new preprint in this category directly from medRxiv to make these critical findings instantly accessible. For each study, we provide both a plain-language explanation for general readers and a detailed technical summary for specialists. This dual approach ensures that vital insights into disease dynamics are understood clearly and quickly by everyone who needs them.
Explore the latest research below to see how scientists are currently mapping disease trends and developing strategies to safeguard global health.
An analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing from 2004 to 2024 reveals that health trends among older adults in England are divergent and socially patterned, characterized by simultaneous improvements in mobility, biomarkers, and memory alongside worsening pain, mental health, and self-rated health.
This prospective cohort study conducted in South Africa found that *Mycoplasma genitalium* infection during pregnancy was not associated with adverse birth outcomes, such as preterm birth or low birth weight, nor did it interact with vaginal dysbiosis, suggesting that routine testing and treatment for the infection in pregnant women may not be necessary.
This paper introduces a novel spatio-temporal framework combining COVID-Twitter-BERT and BERTopic to analyze 2.4 million geolocated tweets, revealing how COVID-19 narratives and sentiments evolved across distinct pandemic phases and varied significantly between US and European regions.
This study estimates that US air pollution control policies targeting electric generating units, mobile sources, and port activities significantly reduced ambient pollutant concentrations between 2005 and 2019, thereby averting a substantial percentage of respiratory emergency department visits in New York City, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, as well as cardiovascular visits in New York City and Los Angeles.
This study presents a novel One Health modeling approach that integrates causal Bayesian networks with hydrological pathogen transport to identify leptospirosis hotspots in Fiji, demonstrating that incorporating expert elicitation significantly improves predictive accuracy and supports the design of targeted, environment-based disease prevention strategies.
This mixed-methods study conducted at Kiambu Main Prison in Kenya reveals a high scabies prevalence of 54.8% among male inmates, identifying inadequate hygiene practices, overcrowding, and institutional resource limitations as key determinants while recommending enhanced screening, education, and treatment protocols to mitigate transmission.
This study employs a data-driven analysis of over 10 million posts from the r/electronic_cigarette subreddit to identify and categorize the public's specific health concerns regarding vaping, revealing that respiratory issues like lipoid pneumonia are the most frequently cited risks.
The study introduces the PureBioX Xpurify Column, a novel high-volume direct capture column that enhances wastewater-based epidemiology by increasing processing throughput by 58% and improving viral RNA detection sensitivity through the removal of RT-PCR inhibitors, despite a slight reduction in total nucleic acid yield.
SymPerturb is a virtual-perturbation framework that transforms symptom-network structures into auditable, ranked intervention hypotheses by applying four primitive operators and three analytic procedures to generate a Virtual Perturbation Priority Score (VPPS) for guiding future longitudinal and experimental testing.
This prospective genomic surveillance study of ICUs reveals that while patient-to-patient transmission occurs, the majority of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) movement between patients is facilitated by healthcare providers' hands and environmental surfaces, highlighting that relying solely on patient sampling significantly underestimates the true burden and transmission pathways of VRE.