Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0021051 (immunodeficiency)
 71,517 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The epidemic of acquired immunodeficiency disease [AIDS] has focused interest on the origins of "new" infectious agents. Great plagues are well known from the distant past, but a number of novel diseases affecting the nervous system infections have emerged in recent years. The causes of such new disorders are diverse: whereas rapid mutations of microbes allow the evolution of truly novel agents, the appearance of new diseases is more often due to changes in human or vector populations or changes in societal mores that result in dissemination of preexistent microbes. Examples of recently emerging infections that involve the nervous system include the enterovirus 70 epidemics with poliomyelitis-like disease, the appearance of California virus encephalitis in the midwestern United States, the rapid spread of Lyme disease with its many neurological complications in the eastern United States, and the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the United Kingdom, in addition to the devastating epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which will cause nervous system disease in over half of those infected. As the world population increases and modern transportation brings us closer into a "global village" more new agents will emerge and more will be sustained. Knowledge of the molecular biology and ecology of the agents and awareness of how our actions can alter their behavior are our best defense.
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PMID:The Soriano Award Lecture. Emerging infections of the nervous system. 793 18

Classification, structure and characteristics of neurotropic viruses are briefly summarized. Neurotropic viruses causing acute infection include Japanese, Venezuelan equine, and California encephalitis viruses, polio, coxsackie, echo, mumps, measles, influenza, and rabies viruses as well as members of the family Herpesviridae such as herpes simplex, varicella-zoster, cytomegalo and Epstein-Barr viruses. Those causing latent infection include herpes simplex and varicella-zoster viruses. Those causing slow virus infection include measles, rubella and JC viruses, and retroviruses such as human T-lymphotropic virus 1 and human immunodeficiency virus. Prion, which is not a virus but a host-derived non-physiological protein, causes transmissible spongiform encephalopathy such as kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease that resemble slow virus infection.
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PMID:[Neurotropic viruses--classification, structure and characteristics]. 910 70