228 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 of Costa Rican dengue dynamics reveals that rural transmission risk is consistently higher than in urban areas and is driven by the interplay of climate suitability, baseline built infrastructure, and agricultural land cover, particularly at lower and mid-elevations.
Using longitudinal data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, this study identifies seven stable clusters of health behaviors across adulthood and reveals a counterintuitive association where the "Overall Low-risk" behavioral cluster, characterized by older women with lower socioeconomic status, exhibits the highest prevalence of multimorbidity, highlighting the critical importance of considering sociodemographic context alongside behavioral patterns.
This study analyzes retrospective surveillance data from 2012 to 2024 to characterize the distribution of mosquito and tick vectors and their pathogen infection rates in Nebraska, finding that while mosquito-borne diseases remain the primary concern with significant geographic variation, data limitations currently hinder definitive conclusions about the direct relationship between vector factors and human disease incidence.
This longitudinal study of Medicaid beneficiaries found that the diagnosis of lung, colon, breast, or prostate cancer was not strongly associated with an increased risk of early-onset dementia within five years, as incidence rates remained comparable between cancer patients and matched controls.
This longitudinal study of Medicaid beneficiaries with HIV found that the risk of dementia is significantly increased following a cancer diagnosis, particularly for AIDS-defining cancers, with incidence rates varying by specific cancer type and patient age.
This study reveals that a small, concentrated group of highly influential authors, particularly "super-retractors" and top-cited scientists with multiple retractions, are disproportionately responsible for a significant portion of retracted randomized clinical trials, which tend to be older, take longer to retract, and accumulate more citations than other retracted studies.
Based on 22 years of longitudinal data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, this study finds that while higher baseline pain severity is independently associated with accelerated cognitive decline in later life, the association between worsening pain severity and cognitive decline becomes non-significant after adjusting for ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and comorbid chronic conditions.
This study suggests that the cardiovascular mortality benefits of smoking cessation are most significant in individuals with low arterial stiffness, whereas those with high arterial stiffness remain at elevated risk regardless of their smoking status.
This paper develops an age-structured mathematical model to project how infection and vaccination strategies influence susceptibility patterns across diverse African demographics, providing a tool to help optimize vaccine delivery and public health planning.
A cross-sectional study in the U.S. Virgin Islands found that nearly half of children aged 8–16 have been previously infected with dengue virus, yet parental awareness and acceptance of dengue vaccination remain critically low.