Current and Emerging Discovery and Prevention Opportunities
Chronic diseases do often stem from infections. Numerous causal associations are established, and progress in the field is certain to detect and confirm additional links. These developments should lead to new treatment regimens and public health programs that substantially reduce and even prevent chronic diseases worldwide, intervening before or during the early stages of disease to avoid or minimize the chronic sequelae of infections. If a mere 5% of chronic disease is attributable to infectious agents, in the United States alone 4.5 million of the 90 million people living with chronic disease might benefit from strategies designed to prevent or appropriately treat selected infections. Worldwide, the impact could be far greater. Avoiding exposure, reducing transmission, vaccinating to avert infection, and treating infection early could realize this prevention potential, dramatically reducing the global impact of chronic disease measured by disability-adjusted life years or other measures (51). The strategies must, however, build on sound scientific evidence.
Continued pathogen discovery and improved detection of infectious agents with sensitive, specific, reproducible assays are crucial to these efforts. In many settings, the systems biology approach will advance the timely recognition, characterization, and mitigation of infectious determinants of chronic diseases (49). Combining proteomics, genomics, microarrays, nanotechnology, and mass spectrometry with traditional detection tools such as histopathology may better confirm or refute hypotheses of causation, but only when applied to appropriate specimens from well-designed epidemiologic studies in the appropriate populations (1). Advances in information technology will be key to these efforts. The nature of chronic disease further demands longitudinal and prospective assessments since the symptoms of chronic disease may not appear until years after exposure to an infectious agent.
At present, cancers, autoimmune or immune-mediated diseases, and neurodevelopmental disorders are leading candidates for infectious agent origins. Yet other chronic conditions must also remain under consideration. Together, infectious determinants of chronic diseases offer a spectrum of research and prevention possibilities—opportunities that could substantially affect global health by reducing chronic disease worldwide. Not all chronic conditions will have infectious agent roots. Nevertheless, the broad prevention potential presented by these causal relationships has emerged as an important, cross-cutting clinical and public health issue, a result of the increased risk posed by newly recognized agents and changing population exposures as well as an increased appreciation for the causal links.
