ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
The germ theory revisited: A noncentric view on infection outcome.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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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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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Distinct Host and Bacterial Profiles in Murine Single Versus Co-Infection with Foal-IsolatedMicroorganisms · 2026Article
- Beyond the germ: Rethinking implant-related infections as a host-microbiota-biomaterial ecosystem.Biofilm · 2026Review
- Periprosthetic joint infection as failure of containment: A causal and probabilistic framework.Journal of orthopaedic translation · 2026Article
- Article
- Virulence Evolution: Thinking Outside of the Host.Evolutionary applications · 2025Article
- A Unified Pathogenesis of Allergic Diseases; The Protein-Homeostasis-System Hypothesis.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Mechanisms of host exploitation by a microsporidian parasite.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Complex interactions in the life cycle of a simple parasite shape the evolution of virulence.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- When DNA Mutations Interplay with Cellular Proliferation: A Narrative History of Theories of Carcinogenesis.Cancers · 2024Review
- The microbial damage and host response framework: lesson learned from pathogenic survival trajectories and immunoinflammatory responses ofFrontiers in immunology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The germ theory states that pathogenic microorganisms are responsible for causing infectious diseases. The theory is inherently microbe-centric and does not account for variability in disease severity among individuals and asymptomatic carriership-two phenomena indicating an important role for host variability in infection outcome. The basic tenet of the germ theory was recently challenged, and a radically host-centric paradigm referred to as the "full-blown host theory" was proposed. According to this view, the pathogen is reduced to a passive environmental trigger, and the development of disease is instead due to pre-existing immunodeficiencies of the host. Here, we consider the factors that determine disease severity using established knowledge concerning evolutionary biology, microbial pathogenesis, and host-pathogen interactions. We note that the available data support a noncentric view that recognizes key roles for both the causative microbe and the host in dictating infection outcome.
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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.