Recent and future developments in the epidemiology of the infectious diseases

Excerpt

Microbiology, that is the unseen living world, is only known very superficially but our knowledge is growing rapidly. This is exemplified by metagenomic studies where all nucleic acids are sequenced from the environment, showing that 70% of sequences obtained from the environment have no match with any database (Eukaryotes, Bacteria, viruses or Archae) [1]. This is measuring objectively our level of ignorance. Therefore understanding now completely human diseases is impossible because of this gap of knowledge of the potential infectious hazards of our environment. This gap of knowledge can result in overinterpretation of currently known factors, if our ignorance is not acknowledged. As a result, conclusions based on statistical tendencies inducted from our current knowledge, will be indeed challenged in the future. Recently new tools such as 16S rDNA amplification and sequencing has allowed the discovery and identification of hundreds of new bacterial pathogens in the 10 last years [2]. As a matter of fact the number of identified bacteria species was multiplied by 4.5. Many viruses were also identified [3]. Diseases caused by these agents could not have been understood before. There is a critical need to close this gap as soon as possible and to invest massively in identification of microorganisms from our body and our environment. The new discovered viruses and microbes will not only allow clarifying the etiology of diseases already considered as caused by microbes, but they will showed to be involved in diseases not currently considered infections such as cancer or obesity. The development of the epidemiology of infectious diseases will develop in my point of view in three major directions in the coming years. …