New review paper: Understanding pathogen tolerance in wild animals key to pandemic preparedness

Our Review Article has been published as part of ‘Evolutionary Medicine: A Special Issue’ from eLife. To view the Special Issue, visit https://elifesciences.org/collections/8d9426aa/evolutionary-medicine-a-special-issue.

In this article, we argue that host immune strategies, ecology and pathogen prevalence all play crucial roles in allowing spillover, but studying them in isolation is far from ideal given the complex interactions involved. We strongly suggest an integrated approach is needed where they should be jointly studied to explain the patterns and processes of pathogen prevalence and infection outcomes in the wild. We also discuss the possible experimental framework which should contribute to such initiatives. This is relevant not only to the present crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic and emerging infections, but will provide a newer understanding of other important aspects of public health, such as infectious disease control.

@Zoonosisartwork Pathogen tolerance in reservoir animals can support a genetically diverse pathogen pool (more mutations and genetic exchanges between circulating strains). Some of these new variants can be more infectious to humans than previous strains https://elifesciences.org/articles/68874

See the press release by eLife here

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