LEFT: JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES. ABOVE: COURTESY OF MARIE MCINTYRE58 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
Pulling It
Together
Pathogens hitch rides on hosts,
spreading microorganisms
such as bacteria and viruses.
Researchers have studied many
of these pathogens (human
immunodeiciency virus, for
example). But the results of their
work aren’t all
stored in the same
place — they’re
scattered across
journals and
various databases.
If experts
sequence a
pathogen’s DNA
(which helps
identify and track
it), that data
typically gets
uploaded to a
public database,
but it’s not paired
with any additional existing
descriptions. Instead, interested
researchers have to manually cross-
reference with various journals.
“We needed to ind a better
way of bringing the information
together,” says Marie McIntyre, an
epidemiologist at the Institute of
Infection and Global Health at the
University of Liverpool.
So McIntyre and her colleagues
created a new database: the
Enhanced Infectious Diseases
Database, or EID2. It’s
programmed to link publicly
available information about all
known pathogens of a given host,
all hosts of a given pathogen
and info about when and where
that pathogen showed up. “It’s
not about where the disease
is occurring today,” McIntyre
says. “It’s about where the
disease is occurring and who
the disease is occurring in.” That
combination of information can
help researchers look for long-
term drivers of disease, such as
how climate affects the spread
of a pathogen.IT’S 2014 IN LIBERIA. The country’s
largest hospital is already full to the brim, unable to
admit. Instead, the sick lie on the ground outside,
writhing and crying in pain. They’re struck with severe
bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, impaired kidney and
liver function, perhaps even internal bleeding. Up to 90
percent of those sick will die. Their only hope of getting
treatment is if someone else dies irst, freeing up a bed.
The culprit behind the devastation? Ebola. By 2016,
the outbreak ended with more than 11,000 reported
deaths across West Africa. In the aftermath, experts
underscored that, during the worst months, few were
prepared for such catastrophe — neither the countries
that suffered most, nor the international community at
large. Though the World Health Organization eventually
declared a Public Health Emergency of International
Concern, it came late, and arguably, so did vital funding.
And while few cases spread outside the continent, the
resulting panic certainly did.
But what if there were an early warning system for
the outbreak? Something that could have given health
organizations a heads-up, allowing them to organize an
effective response, contain the disease’s spread, save tens
of thousands of lives and prevent an international crisis?
Such a system may be in the not-too-distant future.
Non-proit, university and non-government groups
across the globe are tackling this idea from various
angles. From compiling information on potentially
infectious agents to tracking real-time diagnoses in
disease hot spots, epidemiologists — those who study
the incidence and prevalence of disease — are getting
us closer to a world with fewer surprise pandemics.
In a Liberian classroom-turned-isolation ward for Ebola victims, a health worker disinfects
the body of a man who died of the disease in August 2014. By its end in 2016, the outbreak,
which caught health officials off guard, killed more than 11,000 people across West Africa.
Marie
McIntyre
epidemiologist,
Institute of
Infection and
Global Health,
University of
Liverpool