Epidemiology, Biodiversity, and Technological Trajectories in the Brazilian Amazon: From Malaria to COVID-19
by Claudia Codeço et al.The Amazon biome is under severe threat due to increasing deforestation rates and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services while sustaining a high burden of neglected tropical diseases. Approximately two thirds of this biome are located within Brazilian territory. There, socio-economic and environmental landscape transformations are linked to the regional agrarian economy dynamics, which has developed into six techno-productive trajectories (TTs).
Non-communicable diseases: a challenge for global cooperation
by Nísia Trindade Lima e Carlos GadelhaIn current times, it’s easy to forget that over 70% of deaths worldwide are due to non-communicable diseases. How can we tackle their rise? The theory of epidemiological transition (or the changing patterns of population age distributions, mortality, fertility, life expectancy, and causes of death) offers a valuable framework for understanding how different types of diseases can occur simultaneously in a population.
Lying in wait: the resurgence of dengue virus after the Zika epidemic in Brazil
by Anderson Fernandes Brito et al.After the Zika virus (ZIKV) epidemic in the Americas in 2016, both Zika and dengue incidence declined to record lows in many countries in 2017–2018, but in 2019 dengue resurged in Brazil, causing ~2.1 million cases. In this study we use epidemiological, climatological and genomic data to investigate dengue dynamics in recent years in Brazil. First, we estimate dengue virus force of infection (FOI) and model mosquito-borne transmission suitability since the early 2000s. Our estimates reveal that DENV transmission was low in 2017–2018, despite conditions being suitable for viral spread.
Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of the first 557 successive patients with COVID-19 in Pernambuco state, Northeast Brazil
by Jurandy Júnior Ferraz deMagalhães et al.Follow-up household serosurvey in Northeast Brazil for Zika virus: sexual contacts of index patients have the highest risk for seropositivity
by Tereza Magalhaes et al.The Relative Risk (RR) of sexual partners being ZIKV seropositive when living with a ZIKV-seropositive index participant was significantly higher, while this was not observed among non-sexual partners of the index. For CHIKV, both sexual and non-sexual partner household members living with a CHIKV-seropositive index had a significantly higher risk of being seropositive.
The global spread of 2019-nCoV: a molecular evolutionary analysis
by Domenico Benvenuto, Marta Giovanetti, Marco Salemi, Mattia Prosperi, Cecilia De Flora, Luiz Carlos JThe global spread of the 2019-nCoV is continuing and is fast moving, as indicated by the WHO raising the risk assessment to high. In this article, we provide a preliminary phylodynamic and phylogeographic analysis of this new virus. A Maximum Clade Credibility tree has been built using the 29 available whole genome sequences of 2019-nCoV and two whole genome sequences that are highly similar sequences from Bat SARS-like Coronavirus available in GeneBank.