Genomics and Infectious Diseases: Susceptibility, Resistance, Response, and Antimicrobial Therapy

Abstract

Abstract Mankind has been afflicted with infectious diseases throughout history and, at the start of the third millennium, the global burden of infectious disease is still extremely high, with World Health Organization (WHO) figures indicating that infectious diseases are the second leading cause of death after cardiovascular diseases (WHO, 2004) (see Fig. 25–1). Of the 57 million deaths worldwide in 2002, an estimated 14.9 million ( 26%) were due to infectious or parasitic disease, with the majority of this burden falling on children in the African and South East Asian regions (Black et al., 2003; Bryce et al., 2005). Of those 14.9 million deaths, large proportions were due to well-known infectious diseases, namely HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) (2.77 million deaths in 2002), tuberculosis (TB) (1.57 million deaths), and malaria (1.27 million deaths) as illustrated in Figure 25–2. As well as mortality figures, the overall burden placed on a population by a particular disease can also be measured in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) (Murray and Acharya, 1997). This measurement takes into account not only the number of years of healthy life lost due to early mortality, but also the number of years of healthy life lost due to disability or poor health, which are combined and used to quantify the overall disease burden. Using this measure, the global burden of infectious and parasitic diseases was 445 million DALYs in 2002, as compared to cardiovascular diseases with a burden of approximately 148 million DALYs in 2002 (WHO, 2004).