ArticlePLoS biology2016
How Many Parameters Does It Take to Describe Disease Tolerance?
Article in PLoS biology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 36 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed.
- Integrating infection intensity and aggregation into the dynamics of pathogens with within-host replication.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Defense against parasites covaries with reproductive timing, not with resistance.PLoS pathogens · 2026Article
- Parasite defense covaries with reproductive timing, not with resistance.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Tolerance to persistent cell-fusing agent virus infection in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes correlates with maintenance of lipid reserves.BMC biology · 2026Article
- Resources Modulate Developmental Shifts but Not Infection Tolerance Upon Co-Infection in an Insect System.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Article
- Prolonged exposure to heat enhances mosquito tolerance to viral infection.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Resources modulate developmental shifts but not infection tolerance upon coinfection in an insect system.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Assessment of the Entomopathogenic Potential of Fungal and Bacterial Isolates from Fall Armyworm Cadavers Against Spodoptera frugiperda Caterpillars and the Adult Boll Weevil, Anthonomus grandis.Neotropical entomology · 2024Article
- Impact of Chronic Infection on Resistance and Tolerance to Secondary Infection in Drosophila melanogaster.Infection and immunity · 2023Article
- Intraspecific genetic variation in host vigour, viral load and disease tolerance during Drosophila C virus infection.Open biology · 2023Article
- Genetic Resistance of Bovines to Theileriosis.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Review
- Transcriptome features of innate immune memory in Drosophila.PLoS genetics · 2022Article
- Mechanisms of damage prevention, signalling and repair impact disease tolerance.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Elucidating Mechanisms of Tolerance tomBio · 2022Article
- Decomposing virulence to understand bacterial clearance in persistent infections.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Balancing sensitivity, risk, and immunopathology in immune regulation.Current opinion in insect science · 2022Review
- Proliferation and benevolence-A framework for dissecting the mechanisms of microbial virulence and health promotion.Evolutionary applications · 2020Article
- The Biology of Physiological Health.Cell · 2020Review
- Western diet regulates immune status and the response to LPS-driven sepsis independent of diet-associated microbiome.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The study of infectious disease has been aided by model organisms, which have helped to elucidate molecular mechanisms and contributed to the development of new treatments; however, the lack of a conceptual framework for unifying findings across models, combined with host variability, has impeded progress and translation. Here, we fill this gap with a simple graphical and mathematical framework to study disease tolerance, the dose response curve relating health to microbe load; this approach helped uncover parameters that were previously overlooked. Using a model experimental system in which we challenged Drosophila melanogaster with the pathogen Listeria monocytogenes, we tested this framework, finding that microbe growth, the immune response, and disease tolerance were all well represented by sigmoid models. As we altered the system by varying host or pathogen genetics, disease tolerance varied, as we would expect if it was indeed governed by parameters controlling the sensitivity of the system (the number of bacteria required to trigger a response) and maximal effect size according to a logistic equation. Though either the pathogen or host immune response or both together could theoretically be the proximal cause of pathology that killed the flies, we found that the pathogen, but not the immune response, drove damage in this model. With this new understanding of the circuitry controlling disease tolerance, we can now propose better ways of choosing, combining, and developing treatments.
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Registered trials
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.