Abstract

Many of the major human infectious diseases, including some now confined to humans and absent from animals, are ‘new’ ones that arose only after the origins of agriculture. Where did they come from? Why are they overwhelmingly of Old World origins? Here we show that answers to these questions are different for tropical and temperate diseases; for instance, in the relative importance of domestic animals and wild primates as sources. We identify five intermediate stages through which a pathogen exclusively infecting animals may become transformed into a pathogen exclusively infecting humans. We propose an initiative to resolve disputed origins of major diseases, and a global early warning system to monitor pathogens infecting individuals exposed to wild animals.

Keywords

BiologyHuman pathogenPathogenInfectious disease (medical specialty)Evolutionary biologyVirologyDiseaseImmunologyGeneticsMedicineGene

MeSH Terms

AnimalsBiological EvolutionClimateCommunicable DiseasesDisease ReservoirsGeographyHumansZoonoses

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Publication Info

Year
2007
Type
review
Volume
447
Issue
7142
Pages
279-283
Citations
1821
Access
Closed

External Links

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Cite This

Nathan Wolfe, Claire Panosian Dunavan, Jared M. Diamond (2007). Origins of major human infectious diseases. Nature , 447 (7142) , 279-283. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05775

Identifiers

DOI
10.1038/nature05775
PMID
17507975
PMCID
PMC7095142

Data Quality

Data completeness: 86%