ReviewBiological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society2004
Pathogen survival in the external environment and the evolution of virulence.
Review in Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 113 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
113 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- How long do bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and viruses retain their replication capacity on inanimate surfaces? A systematic review examining environmental resilience versus healthcare-associated infection risk by "fomite-borne risk assessment".Clinical microbiology reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Household-level risk factors for secondary influenza-like illness in a rural area of Bangladesh.Tropical medicine & international health : TM & IH · 2017Trial
- Surface Composition and Temperature Interact to Shape Viral Survival and Growth.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Testing the drivers of environmental persistence in bacterial pathogens.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2026Article
- Shared pathogens among honey bees, wild bees and hoverflies in mountain ecosystems.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Coevolution of host resistance and pathogen exploitation in a propagule-mediated infection model.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Isolation and identification of Pasteurella species and other bacterial organisms from ovine pneumonic lungs and their antimicrobial susceptibility in Ghana: abattoir-based study.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- Coupling plankton and cholera dynamics: Insights into outbreak prediction and practical disease management.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Epidemic evolutionarily stable strategies within an age-structured host population.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Modeling natural coinfection in a bat reservoir shows modulation of Marburg virus shedding and spillover potential.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- An interdisciplinary perspective of the built-environment microbiome.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2025Review
- The emergence of neuroinvasiveFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Article
- Will COVID-19 become mild, like a cold?Epidemiology and infection · 2024Review
- Variation in bacterial pathotype is consistent with the sit-and-wait hypothesis.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2024Article
- The impact of sterility-mortality tolerance and recovery-transmission trade-offs on host-parasite coevolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Agentic processes in cultural evolution: relevance to Anthropocene sustainability.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Biofilm formation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in spaceflight is minimized on lubricant impregnated surfaces.NPJ microgravity · 2023Article
- Within- and between-host dynamics of producer and non-producer pathogens.Parasitology · 2023Article
- Monkeypox: a review of epidemiological modelling studies and how modelling has led to mechanistic insight.Epidemiology and infection · 2023Review
- Infection burdens and virulence under heat stress: ecological and evolutionary considerations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
53 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent studies have provided evolutionary explanations for much of the variation in mortality among human infectious diseases. One gap in this knowledge concerns respiratory tract pathogens transmitted from person to person by direct contact or through environmental contamination. The sit-and-wait hypothesis predicts that virulence should be positively correlated with durability in the external environment because high durability reduces the dependence of transmission on host mobility. Reviewing the epidemiological and medical literature, we confirm this prediction for respiratory tract pathogens of humans. Our results clearly distinguish a high-virulence high-survival group of variola (smallpox) virus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Cornynebacterium diphtheriae, Bordetella pertussis, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and influenza virus (where all pathogens have a mean percent mortality > or = 0.01% and mean survival time >10 days) from a low-virulence low-survival group containing ten other pathogens. The correlation between virulence and durability explains three to four times of magnitude of difference in mean percent mortality and mean survival time, using both across-species and phylogenetically controlled analyses. Our findings bear on several areas of active research and public health policy: (1) many pathogens used in the biological control of insects are potential sit-and-wait pathogens as they combine three attributes that are advantageous for pest control: high virulence, long durability after application, and host specificity; (2) emerging pathogens such as the 'hospital superbug' methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and potential bioweapons pathogens such as smallpox virus and anthrax that are particularly dangerous can be discerned by quantifying their durability; (3) hospital settings and the AIDS pandemic may provide footholds for emerging sit-and-wait pathogens; and (4) studies on food-borne and insect pathogens point to future research considering the potential evolutionary trade-offs and genetic linkages between virulence and durability.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.