357 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 six-year longitudinal study of working-age adults in Sri Lanka reveals that nearly a quarter experienced declining kidney function and identifies smokeless tobacco use, smoking, and weedkiller exposure as significant risk factors for transitioning from healthy to unhealthy kidney states.
This paper introduces Simple-Means MAIHDA (S-MAIHDA) as a distribution-free method that accurately describes health inequalities by using observed stratum data to avoid the distortion and attenuation of small-stratum effects caused by the shrinkage inherent in traditional Random-Effects MAIHDA.
This prospective study in Hoima, Uganda, reveals that rickettsiosis is the leading cause of acute undifferentiated fever, surpassing malaria and leptospirosis in prevalence, and underscores the need to update clinical guidelines to include empiric doxycycline treatment and improved diagnostics for malaria-negative patients with relevant environmental exposures.
T-Rx is an open-source R package designed to facilitate the reproducible extraction, imputation, and conversion of prescription data from electronic health records into longitudinal exposure periods and phenotype dataframes for downstream genetic and epidemiological analyses.
Using a rigorous sequential target trial emulation framework with refined outcomes and quantitative bias analysis in Medicare beneficiaries, this study confirmed that atorvastatin initiation is associated with increased risks of early hemorrhagic cerebrovascular events, cardiac valve disorders, musculoskeletal injuries in men, and specific hepatobiliary events, while refuting other previously detected signals.
This multilevel analysis of the 2024-25 Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey reveals that hypertension among overweight and obese adults is significantly driven by individual factors such as age, sex, education, and wealth, as well as community-level determinants including urban residence and wealth concentration, highlighting the need for integrated clinical and structural public health interventions.
This study presents a mathematical model demonstrating that reducing smoking behavior among men who have sex with men (MSM) significantly lowers HPV transmission and anal cancer burden, while also decreasing the vaccination coverage required to control the disease, particularly in settings where male vaccination is unavailable.
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 adapts epidemiological methods to model multi-actor violent conflicts in Nigeria as an epidemic process, revealing that effective violence suppression and civilian harm reduction require distinct, actor-specific strategies rather than uniform interventions.