166 papers
Infectious diseases represent one of the most dynamic frontiers in global health, covering everything from seasonal flu outbreaks to emerging viral threats that cross borders. This field focuses on how pathogens spread, how our immune systems respond, and the strategies scientists use to stop infections before they become epidemics. Because the science moves fast, waiting for traditional publication often means missing critical insights that could save lives.
At Gist.Science, we process every new preprint in this category directly from medRxiv to ensure you see the latest findings the moment they appear. Our team transforms these raw studies into both accessible plain-language explanations and detailed technical summaries, bridging the gap between complex research and public understanding. Below are the latest papers in infectious diseases, updated daily with fresh insights from the global research community.
This study of a Victorian cohort of priority populations reveals that younger age and larger household size, rather than culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) status or socioeconomic factors, were the primary drivers of COVID-19 infection risk, highlighting the need for pandemic policies focused on housing density and protections for younger essential workers.
This prospective genomic epidemiology study in Ho Chi Minh City reveals that the majority of rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis cases are driven by the ongoing transmission of already-resistant strains rather than *de novo* resistance acquisition, highlighting the need for strategies that combine early diagnosis to interrupt transmission with efforts to identify and control the drivers of newly acquired resistance.
This study utilizes plasma proteomics and machine learning to identify early biomarkers, such as PTX3 and CLEC11A, that distinguish subclinical from severe dengue cases in children by revealing early endothelial dysfunction and inflammatory activation.
This five-year hospital-based study in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, reveals a low but steady rate of rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis (2.3%) driven primarily by primary transmission of strains harboring the codon 526 rpoB mutation, underscoring the urgent need to shift from reactive clinical management to proactive public health strategies like universal drug susceptibility testing and enhanced contact tracing.
This genomic epidemiology study reveals that African *Treponema pallidum* strains exhibit remarkable local diversity and limited global sharing compared to high-income countries, with significantly lower macrolide resistance, underscoring the need for intensive local sampling to inform targeted surveillance, treatment guidelines, and vaccine design.
This interview study identifies key behavioural determinants of testing during a hypothetical avian influenza outbreak, highlighting that individual autonomy, personal and familial health benefits, external constraints, and trust in authorities significantly influence testing decisions, while past pandemic experiences shape current attitudes.
This systematic review synthesizes epidemiological data, risk factors, and mathematical modeling of Nipah virus from 119 studies to characterize its severe disease outcomes, variable fatality rates, and transmission dynamics, while providing an accessible R package to support future outbreak responses.
This study of Ethiopian malaria patients reveals that while mixed *Plasmodium vivax* and *Plasmodium falciparum* infections exhibit altered parasite and gametocyte densities compared to mono-infections, they do not show evidence of interspecies competition in mosquitoes and remain a significant, often undetected, risk for sustaining malaria transmission.
This study establishes a novel, optimized protocol for extracting high-quality genomic DNA directly from QuantiFERON-TB Gold tubes, demonstrating that the resulting DNA is suitable for both PCR and whole-exome sequencing, thereby enabling the integration of latent tuberculosis diagnosis with downstream molecular research without requiring additional blood sampling.
This study proposes a Bayesian framework that explicitly accounts for uncertainty in participants' ages within serocatalytic models, demonstrating that this approach yields more reliable estimates of the force of infection compared to the common practice of using age bin midpoints.