Epidemiology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors examine the role of monkey populations in the sylvatic cycle of chikungunya virus in the Kédougou region, Senegal. The authors show that monkeys are amplification hosts, as opposed to reservoir hosts for infection. These findings expand our knowledge of the transmission dynamics of chikungunya virus in this region of Senegal.

    • Benjamin M. Althouse
    • , Mathilde Guerbois
    •  & Kathryn A. Hanley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Individuals with different genotypes may respond differently to environmental variation. Here, Favé et al. find substantial impacts of different environment exposures on the transcriptome and clinical endophenotypes when controlling for genetic ancestry by analyzing data from ∼1000 individuals from a founder population in Quebec.

    • Marie-Julie Favé
    • , Fabien C. Lamaze
    •  & Philip Awadalla

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Recall-by-Genotype (RbG) is an approach to recall participants from genetic studies based on their specific genotype for further, more extensive phenotyping. Here, the authors discuss examples of RbG as well as practical and ethical considerations and provide an online tool to aid in designing RbG studies.

    • Laura J. Corbin
    • , Vanessa Y. Tan
    •  & Nicholas J. Timpson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Vitamin D deficiency is associated with multiple human pathologic conditions. In a genome-wide association study of 79,366 individuals, Jiang et al. replicate four and identify two new genetic loci for serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D and find evidence for a shared genetic basis with autoimmune diseases.

    • Xia Jiang
    • , Paul F. O’Reilly
    •  & Douglas P. Kiel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding global epidemics spread is crucial for preparedness and response. Here the authors introduce an analytical framework to study epidemic spread on air transport networks, and demonstrate its power to estimate key epidemic parameters by application to the recent influenza pandemic and Ebola outbreak.

    • Lin Wang
    •  & Joseph T. Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cancer heritability estimates can be obtained via decomposing trait variance into genetic and other factors. Here, the authors obtain the distribution of absolute genetic risk for 15 common cancers, and they use a number of metrics to show that the genetic risk varies considerably across individuals.

    • Mats Julius Stensrud
    •  & Morten Valberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inaccuracy of influenza forecasts based on dynamical models is partly due to nonlinear error growth. Here the authors address the error structure of a compartmental influenza model, and develop a new improved forecast approach combining dynamical error correction and statistical filtering techniques.

    • Sen Pei
    •  & Jeffrey Shaman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sleep patterns vary and are associated with health and disease. Here Purcellet alcharacterize sleep spindle activity in 11,630 individuals and describe age-related changes, genetic influences, and possible confounding effects, serving as a resource for further understanding the physiology of sleep.

    • S. M. Purcell
    • , D. S. Manoach
    •  & R. Stickgold

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have become a key tool to discover genetic markers for complex traits; however, environmental factors that interact with genes are rarely considered. Here, the authors conduct a GWAS of obesity traits, and find that smoking may alter genetic susceptibilities.

    • Anne E. Justice
    • , Thomas W. Winkler
    •  & L Adrienne Cupples

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Some argue that health-related behaviours, such as obesity, are contagious, but empirical evidence of health contagion remains inconclusive. Here, using a large scale quasi-experiment in a global network of runners, Aral and Nicolaides show that this type of contagion exists in fitness behaviours.

    • Sinan Aral
    •  & Christos Nicolaides

  • Article
    | Open Access

    DNA methylation is modulated by environmental factors and has a role in many complex diseases. Here, the authors find that methylation at specific DNA sites is associated with all-cause mortality, and a methylation-based risk score may be informative for risk assessment and stratification.

    • Yan Zhang
    • , Rory Wilson
    •  & Hermann Brenner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The socioeconomic burden of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is high, but the projected number of cases in the upcoming years is unclear. Here, the authors estimate the number and distribution of ALS cases to 2040, and show that cases are projected to increase, particularly in developing nations.

    • Karissa C. Arthur
    • , Andrea Calvo
    •  & Bryan J. Traynor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impact of antibiotics on the microbiome and health of children is poorly understood. Here, Korpela et al. study the gut microbiome of 142 children and show that the use of macrolides, but not penicillins, is associated with long-lasting shifts in microbiota composition and increased risk of asthma and overweight.

    • Katri Korpela
    • , Anne Salonen
    •  & Willem M. de Vos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mathematical models are used to predict malaria burden to inform disease control efforts. Here, Cameron et al. use Bayesian statistics to calibrate previous models against a data set of age-structured prevalence and incidence, generating stratified forecasts of the prevalence–incidence relationship.

    • Ewan Cameron
    • , Katherine E. Battle
    •  & Peter W. Gething

  • Article |

    African Americans have much higher colon cancer rates than rural South Africans, which is associated with dietary and metabolic differences. Here, O’Keefe et al.show that switching quantities of fat and fibre leads to reciprocal changes in gut microbiota, metabolites and cancer biomarkers.

    • Stephen J. D. O’Keefe
    • , Jia V. Li
    •  & Erwin G. Zoetendal

  • Article |

    Scrapie, a form of prion disease that affects sheep and goats, is believed not to be transmissible to humans. Using transgenic mice expressing human prion protein as a model of cross-species prion transmission, the authors show that ovine scrapie may possess potential to be passed on to humans.

    • Hervé Cassard
    • , Juan-Maria Torres
    •  & Olivier Andréoletti

  • Article |

    Plasmodium vivax, the leading cause of human malaria in Asia and Latin America, is thought to have an Asian origin. Here, the authors show that wild chimpanzees and gorillas in Africa are infected with parasites that are closely related to P. vivax, indicating an African origin for this species.

    • Weimin Liu
    • , Yingying Li
    •  & Paul M. Sharp

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The structure of the human gut microbiota has been shown to vary between populations. Tyakht et al.analyse the gut microbiota assembly from Russian individuals living in urban and rural areas, and compare these with previously studied populations.

    • Alexander V. Tyakht
    • , Elena S. Kostryukova
    •  & Vadim M. Govorun

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Malaria can persist at levels that escape detection by standard microscopy, but can be detected by PCR. Okell et al.now show that rates of submicroscopic infection can be predicted using more widely available microscopy data, and are most epidemiologically significant in areas with low malaria transmission.

    • Lucy C. Okell
    • , Teun Bousema
    •  & Chris J. Drakeley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Seasonal malaria chemoprevention can lower the incidence of malaria in areas where transmission is highly periodical. Combining data on rainfall, population and malaria endemicity, Cairnset al. identify geographical areas in sub-Saharan Africa where this intervention is likely to be effective and cost-effective.

    • Matthew Cairns
    • , Arantxa Roca-Feltrer
    •  & Brian M. Greenwood

  • Article |

    The treatment ofMycobacterium tuberculosis with drugs such as isoniazid often results in drug resistance, but the mechanisms leading to the resistance are not fully known. In this study, an M. tuberculosisstrain lacking the sigma factor I is shown to be resistant to isoniazid.

    • Jong-Hee Lee
    • , Nicole C. Ammerman
    •  & William R. Bishai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spatial epidemiology studies identify malaria hotspots, which sustain transmission and so could be targeted by control programmes. This study uses spatial data on larval sites and malaria episodes to show that transmission can be disrupted by targeting vector breeding sites close to and downwind of malaria hotspots.

    • Janet T. Midega
    • , Dave L. Smith
    •  & Philip Bejon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent work has shown that the transmission of malaria from mosquito to human is inefficient. In this study, an analysis of published literature is used to understand this inefficiency, which is likely due to heterogeneous biting, where 20% of people receive 80% of the bites.

    • David L. Smith
    • , Chris J. Drakeley
    •  & Simon I. Hay

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