227 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.
This study analyzes 20 years of mortality data in Greece to demonstrate that heatwaves consistently increase death rates, particularly among the elderly and females, with over half of these heat-related deaths attributable to human-induced climate change and little evidence of population-level adaptation.
This prospective cohort study of 8,661 adults reveals that the cardiovascular mortality benefits of physical activity are modified by age, sex, and adiposity, with younger adults and women deriving greater protection from higher intensity while older adults and men benefit more from increased volume, and these associations being strongest in individuals with lower body fat.
This analytic cross-sectional study of 54,544 severe malaria admissions in Ghana's Ashanti Region (2018–2022) identifies that mortality is significantly influenced by age, comorbidities, insurance status, and facility type, highlighting the need for targeted interventions such as improved NHIS enrollment, extended inpatient monitoring, and enhanced comorbidity management to reduce preventable deaths.
This study develops a Bayesian semi-mechanistic framework that explicitly accounts for data source heterogeneity and uses a logistic growth model to accurately estimate and predict antimicrobial resistance trajectories for *Acinetobacter baumannii* across 32 Asian countries, demonstrating superior performance over existing ensemble methods.
This study assessed the prevalence of non-communicable diseases among 86 pregnant women in three randomly selected teagardens in Sreemongol, Moulvibazar, finding significant rates of gestational diabetes (12.7%), underweight status (28%), and pregnancy complications (16.5%) to inform future community-based surveillance models.
During the 2024-25 U.S. influenza season, the vaccine demonstrated moderate effectiveness of approximately 33% against outpatient medically attended influenza, with specific protection ranging from 27% to 40% across different virus subtypes.
In a 2018–2019 US test-negative study, higher serum antibody titers against circulating influenza viruses, particularly neuraminidase inhibition (NAI) and microneutralization (MN) titers, were significantly associated with reduced odds of laboratory-confirmed influenza infection in adults.
This study analyzes Russian mortality data from March 2020 to December 2021 to reveal that excess deaths significantly exceeded official COVID-19 counts, driven primarily by cardiovascular diseases and concentrated among working-age men and populous regions, while highlighting how coding inconsistencies may obscure the full indirect burden of the pandemic.
This study demonstrates that wastewater-based genomic surveillance in two Nairobi informal settlements effectively tracked SARS-CoV-2 variant circulation, identifying Omicron as the predominant strain and providing a cost-effective, reliable complement to clinical surveillance in resource-limited settings.
The National Disease Registration Service successfully implemented accelerated cancer registration products to deliver high-quality, timely data with high concordance to support the rapid analysis of the NHS-Galleri multi-cancer early detection trial.