Topic
Infectious disease research, explained
9 open-access infectious disease studies, each with a flashcard deck and a quiz.
- Does bacterial vaginosis make HIV easier to pass to men?
Men whose HIV-positive female partners had bacterial vaginosis were about three times more likely to catch HIV from them than men whose partners had normal vaginal bacteria.
- How much could closing schools slow a close-contact epidemic?
People had fewer and differently mixed contacts at weekends and during school holidays, which would lower an infection's reproduction number enough to suggest school closure could meaningfully slow spread in most countries studied.
- Does an earlier dengue infection protect children from Zika?
Children who had caught dengue before were no less likely to be infected by Zika, but when infected they were about a third less likely to get sick with symptoms.
- Is a disrupted gut linked to how sick COVID-19 patients get?
COVID-19 patients had a different mix of gut bacteria from healthy controls, and certain bacteria and signs of a leaky gut tracked with more severe illness and stronger inflammation.
- How do teens born with HIV fare in different parts of the world?
Adolescents born with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America started treatment years later and were several times more likely to die in early adolescence than those in Europe.
- Do heart and metabolic conditions cause worse COVID-19?
Of 17 heart and metabolic risk factors tested with genetic methods, only higher BMI showed evidence of causally raising the risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19.
- Can easy TB diagnosis keep infectious TB low where HIV is common?
HIV made new TB cases about twenty times more common, but because HIV-positive people got sick and were diagnosed quickly, most undiagnosed infectious TB found by screening was in HIV-negative workers.
- Who meets whom, and how would closing schools slow an epidemic?
Contact diaries showed that people mostly mix with others of similar age, and plugging holiday-period contacts into an epidemic model suggested that closing schools would cut the reproduction number of a flu-like infection by about a sixth.
- Does COVID-19 raise healthcare use and costs for months afterwards?
After a COVID-19 diagnosis, adults kept using more healthcare and costing more each month for at least six months than they had before infection, while children returned close to their previous level.