(Press-News.org) While public health officials around the world are on alert about the pandemic potential of new disease threats, a team that includes Penn State University biologist Marcel Salathé is developing innovative new systems and techniques to track the spread of infectious diseases, with the help of news websites, blogs, and social media. Salathé will publish an article in the 1 July 2013 issue of th New England Journal of Medicine, with colleagues from the Harvard Medical School, describing the advantages and challenges of "digital epidemiology" -- a new field of increasing importance for tracking infectious disease outbreaks and epidemics by leveraging the widespread use of the Internet and mobile phones.
"In the past year, the world has seen an emerging outbreak of two viruses with considerable pandemic potential: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus and Avian Influenza A H7N9," Salathé said. He explained that the former is similar to the virus responsible for the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003 and has, since 2012, infected 64 people, 38 of them fatally. Influenza A H7N9 is a virus that normally circulates in birds but has, since the beginning of 2013, infected 137 people, 32 of them fatally.
"Digital epidemiology played a crucial role in the surveillance of both Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus and Avian Influenza A H7N9 by enhancing transparency and helping public health officials to understand outbreaks more fully. It is clear that the importance of digital epidemiology will only increase in the future as more people get mobile access to broadband around the globe," said Salathé, who uses data from social media in his research to study how sentiments about vaccination spread in populations. "With 6.8 billion mobile-phones and 2.9 billion people online, it's getting increasingly hard for any micro-organism to spread undetected for long."
Salathé also said he predicts that digital epidemiology will not be limited to just infectious diseases for long. "Mining these novel, big-data streams is of enormous interest to practically anyone interested in health and disease," he said. "For example, researchers and public health officials could use data-mining techniques to detect adverse drug reactions, assess mental disorders, or track health behaviors much faster than they do with traditional methods."
Salathé added that he is honored to have the opportunity to reach such a wide audience through the New England Journal of Medicine. "We're hoping to put Digital Epidemiology on the agenda of every public health agency to complement their traditional efforts to track diseases and assess and mitigate the spread of infectious diseases," he said.
INFORMATION:
[ Katrina Voss ]
CONTACTS
Marcel Salathé
408-386-8916 mobile
814-867-4431 office
salathe@psu.edu
Barbara Kennedy (PIO)
814-863-4682
science@psu.edu
IMAGE
A high-resolution image associated with this story is online at http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2013-news/Salathe7-2013 .
CAPTION
Marcel Salathé will publish an article describing a new field of research known as digital epidemiology. This field is of increasing importance for tracking outbreaks of infectious diseases such as the one caused by a novel coronavirus, pictured here.
CREDIT
Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health
Infectious disease research gets a boost from websites, blogs, and social media
2013-07-02
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Growth in cerebral aneurysms increases risk of rupture
2013-07-02
OAK BROOK, Ill. – Cerebral aneurysms of all sizes—even small ones below seven millimeters—are 12 times more likely to rupture if they are growing in size, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology.
A cerebral aneurysm is a balloon-like bulge in a weakened blood vessel in the brain. If an aneurysm ruptures, blood is leaked into or around the brain, which can cause brain damage or death.
According to The Brain Aneurysm Foundation, an estimated 6 million people in the United States have an unruptured brain aneurysm, or 1 in 50 people. Ruptured ...
New study describes imaging findings in H7N9 influenza
2013-07-02
OAK BROOK, Ill. – H7N9 pneumonia is characterized by imaging findings that differentiate it from other types of pneumonia, including rapidly progressive changes in the lungs and pulmonary connective tissues, according to the first study to describe radiologic findings in the disease. The results are published online in the journal Radiology.
"The severity of these findings is associated with the severity of the clinical condition of the patients," said study co-author Zhiyong Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Radiology at Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center ...
Poor planning skills found to contribute to income-achievement gap
2013-07-02
Children from low-income families tend to do worse at school than their better-off peers. Now a new study of a large ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of children from across the United States has identified poor planning skills as one reason for the income-achievement gap, which can emerge as early as kindergarten and continue through high school.
The study, by researchers at Cornell University, appears in the journal Child Development.
"Low-income children appear to have more difficulty accomplishing planning tasks efficiently, and this, in turn, partially ...
Genomes of cholera bacteria from Haiti confirm epidemic originated from single source
2013-07-02
The strain of cholera that has sickened thousands in Haiti came from a single source and was not repeatedly introduced to the island over the past three years as some have thought, according to a new study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
The results of this latest study are consistent with earlier findings that indicate Vibrio cholerae bacteria were introduced to Haiti by United nations soldiers between July and October 2010, when Nepalese soldiers arrived to assist recovery efforts after the January 2010 earthquake ...
Balancing food security and environmental quality in China
2013-07-02
In many ways, the evolution of Chinese agriculture over the past 40 years is a remarkable success story. Spurred by investments in research and government subsidies for fertilizers and other farm technologies, China now feeds 22% of the world's population on just 9% of its total arable land.
But as a special collection of papers in the July-August issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality (JEQ) points out, these achievements have come at a cost. Massive losses of nutrients from croplands and manure from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have polluted ...
Low levels of toxic proteins linked to brain diseases, study suggests
2013-07-02
Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's could be better understood thanks to insight into proteins linked to such conditions, a study suggests.
Scientists studying thread-like chains of protein – called amyloid fibres – have found that low levels of these proteins may cause more harm to health than high levels.
These rarely formed protein chains, which have been linked with dozens of diseases, are produced as a result of a genetic flaw or changes in body chemistry brought about by ageing.
When this happens, short fibres are formed which become sticky and attract ...
Teens' self-consciousness linked with specific brain, physiological responses
2013-07-02
Teenagers are famously self-conscious, acutely aware and concerned about what their peers think of them. A new study reveals that this self-consciousness is linked with specific physiological and brain responses that seem to emerge and peak in adolescence.
"Our study identifies adolescence as a unique period of the lifespan in which self-conscious emotion, physiological reactivity, and activity in specific brain areas converge and peak in response to being evaluated by others," says psychological scientist and lead researcher Leah Somerville of Harvard University.
The ...
Diagnosis of cervical spondylotic myelopathy delayed by primary care physicians
2013-07-01
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (JULY 1, 2013). Researchers from The Tel-Aviv Medical Center found delays in diagnosis of cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) averaging 2 years in 42 patients who eventually underwent surgery. This is an important finding, because previous studies have shown that early diagnosis and treatment of CSM lead to better outcomes. The majority of patients initially sought a diagnosis for their symptoms from family physicians, who arrived at a correct diagnosis in only 4.8% of cases and never at the first clinic visit. Many other patients initially consulted ...
JCI early table of contents for July 1, 2013
2013-07-01
Potential gene therapy for Sickle cell disease
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in hemoglobin (HBB) that deform red blood cells. A small number of patients have been successfully treated with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation; however, there are several drawbacks and complications associated with this procedure, including graft vs. host disease and long-term immune suppression. Many of complications could potentially be avoided by the use of autologous HSC transplant, which uses patient cells that ...
Potential gene therapy for Sickle cell disease
2013-07-01
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in hemoglobin (HBB) that deform red blood cells. A small number of patients have been successfully treated with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation; however, there are several drawbacks and complications associated with this procedure, including graft vs. host disease and long-term immune suppression. Many of complications could potentially be avoided by the use of autologous HSC transplant, which uses patient cells that have been treated genetically modified to replace ...