Before new interventions can be used in disease control programmes, it is essential that they are carefully evaluated in “field trials”, which may be complex and expensive undertakings. Descriptions of the detailed procedures and methods used in trials that have been conducted in the past have generally not been published. As a consequence, those planning such trials have few guidelines ava…
It is almost impossible to find a plague-related news item today that is not accompanied by an image of a rat. The best-known carriers of zoonotic diseases, rats are so closely identified with plague that research articles about the role of other mammals in the spread or maintenance of the disease are met with enthusiasm in the media—and in some cases mistakenly hailed as exonerating rats fro…
Taller people tend to weigh more than shorter people. This chapter will interrogate how weight varies with height. The body mass index (BMI, calculated as weight (W) divided by height (H) squared) is one way to express weight adjusted for height.
Obesity is a subcortical brain disease characterised by the pathognomonic symptoms of excessive hunger and/or reduced satiation after a meal. Distinct subtypes of obesity are recognised, although the rising incidence of polygenic obesity resulting from incompletely elucidated gene-environment interactions is of greatest public health concern. Obesity complications are well documented; their rev…
This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researcher…
The call for a One Health approach that transcends species and disciplinary boundaries assumes that human and veterinary medicine are discrete, distinctive domains whose separation must be overcome to achieve health benefits for all. This paper will problematize this assumption by demonstrating that until relatively recently, their boundaries were extremely fluid. Referring to specific examples…
Tropical diseases affect millions of people throughout the world and particularly in the developing countries. The millennium development goals had specifically targeted HIV/AIDS and Malaria for substantial reduction as well as Tuberculosis while many other tropical diseases have been neglected. The new sustainable development goals have not made such distinction and have targeted all diseases …
This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researcher…
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by motor and non-motor symptoms due to the degeneration of the pars compacta of the substantia nigra (SNc) with dopaminergic denervation of the striatum. Although the diagnosis of PD is principally based on a clinical assessment, great efforts have been expended over the past two decades to evaluate reliab…
Insulin is an essential protein hormone secreted by the beta cells of the islet of Langerhans in the pancreas which is involved in glucose homeostasis, cell metabolism and mitogenesis