Current Infectious Threats Associated With the Development of Civilization and Progress in Medicine - Methods of Prevention and Education

Abstract

Summary:The development of civilization, economic growth, urbanization, industrialization and progress in medicine bring to the society an improvement in the quality of life, but at the same time caused changes in lifestyle, environmental conditions, and changes in the natural environment. All of these led to develop civilization diseases which have critical impact and the adverse effect on our health, about what we not always realize. In the past ifty years, about 30 new pathogens appeared causing diseases such as legionellosis, Lyme disease, and increase unexpectedly tuberculosis incidence which in some regions is associated with HIV infections. Also widespread use of antibiotics caused and still causing bacterial resistance increase to most of them. With the development of medicine and surgery, parallel effects of surgical areas and infections associated with implanted cardiac devices in the majority of the life-saving ones appeared. The development of research techniques allowed for the inding of new relationships between ecosystems in the microbiome of the gastrointestinal tract with of obesity in the society. The presence of new health aspects of civilization diseases impose pressure to create new prevention methods and public education.Keywords: Lyme disease, legionellosis, tuberculosis, microbiome, antibiotic resistance Civilization human health was changing over the centuries as a response to the processes of urbanization, industrialization and environmental change. It was related with development and size of infections epidemics, and mortality. During that time we observed progress in medical knowledge, prevention methods, and generally accepted public health status. Traces of the effects of infection are visible in prehistoric anthropological research, and they concern tuberculosis changes in bones, smallpox. The irst mention of the epidemic was recorded in the ifth century BC, and its direct cause was crowding inhabitants and troops within the area of Athens. Mortality rate was high, and the main reason for that was the lack of awareness of proper hygiene. In the Middle were great epidemics of smallpox, plague, cholera, in luenza which destroyed entire cities and the states. They were largely caused by overcrowding of cities and increased migration of the population. In the subsequent centuries the scale of infectious diseases was modi ied by the process of urbanization development of industry (late nineteenth and twentieth century). Progress of microbiological knowledge fallowed by discoveries of Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and Ilya Mechnikov. The irst preventive vaccinations against smallpox were introduced thanks to the observations of Edward Jenner in the eighteenth century.Modern civilization is still not free from infectious diseases in spite of signi icant progress in medicine economic, and social achievements. We observe important changes in the pro ile of infections, prevention methods, species of pathogenic microorganisms and their sensitivity to antibiotics. At the end of the twentieth cent...

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