A Global Immunological Observatory to meet a time of pandemics
- Harvard School of Public Health, United States
- Princeton University, United States
- National Institutes of Health, United States
- The Wellcome Trust, United Kingdom
Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 presents an unprecedented international challenge, but it will not be the last such threat. Here, we argue that the world needs to be much better prepared to rapidly detect, define and defeat future pandemics. We propose that a Global Immunological Observatory (GIO) and associated developments in systems immunology, therapeutics and vaccine design should be at the heart of this enterprise.
Data availability
No data is involved in this manuscript.
Article and author information
Author details
C Jessica E Metcalf
Adrian B McDermott
Funding
The authors declare that there was no funding for this work.
Reviewing Editor
- Peter Rodgers, eLife, United Kingdom
Publication history
- Received: May 18, 2020
- Accepted: June 5, 2020
- Accepted Manuscript published: June 8, 2020 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: June 12, 2020 (version 2)
Copyright
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
Metrics
-
- 3,951
- Page views
-
- 416
- Downloads
-
- 27
- Citations
Article citation count generated by polling the highest count across the following sources: PubMed Central, Scopus, Crossref.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
A Global Immunological Observatory to meet a time of pandemics
eLife 9:e58989.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58989
Further reading
-
- Epidemiology and Global Health
Background:
Vitamin D supplements are widely prescribed to help reduce disease risk. However, this strategy is based on findings using conventional epidemiological methods which are prone to confounding and reverse causation.
Methods:
In this short report, we leveraged genetic variants which differentially influence body size during childhood and adulthood within a multivariable Mendelian randomization (MR) framework, allowing us to separate the genetically predicted effects of adiposity at these two timepoints in the lifecourse.
Results:
Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), there was strong evidence that higher childhood body size has a direct effect on lower vitamin D levels in early life (mean age: 9.9 years, range = 8.9–11.5 years) after accounting for the effect of the adult body size genetic score (beta = −0.32, 95% CI = −0.54 to –0.10, p=0.004). Conversely, we found evidence that the effect of childhood body size on vitamin D levels in midlife (mean age: 56.5 years, range = 40–69 years) is putatively mediated along the causal pathway involving adulthood adiposity (beta = −0.17, 95% CI = −0.21 to –0.13, p=4.6 × 10-17).
Conclusions:
Our findings have important implications in terms of the causal influence of vitamin D deficiency on disease risk. Furthermore, they serve as a compelling proof of concept that the timepoints across the lifecourse at which exposures and outcomes are measured can meaningfully impact overall conclusions drawn by MR studies.
Funding:
This work was supported by the Integrative Epidemiology Unit which receives funding from the UK Medical Research Council and the University of Bristol (MC_UU_00011/1).
-
- Epidemiology and Global Health
- Microbiology and Infectious Disease
The effective reproductive number Re is a key indicator of the growth of an epidemic. Since the start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, many methods and online dashboards have sprung up to monitor this number through time. However, these methods are not always thoroughly tested, correctly placed in time, or are overly confident during high incidence periods. Here, we present a method for timely estimation of Re, applied to COVID-19 epidemic data from 170 countries. We thoroughly evaluate the method on simulated data, and present an intuitive web interface for interactive data exploration. We show that, in early 2020, in the majority of countries the estimated Re dropped below 1 only after the introduction of major non-pharmaceutical interventions. For Europe the implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions was broadly associated with reductions in the estimated Re. Globally though, relaxing non-pharmaceutical interventions had more varied effects on subsequent Re estimates. Our framework is useful to inform governments and the general public on the status of epidemics in their country, and is used as the official source of Re estimates for SARS-CoV-2 in Switzerland. It further allows detailed comparison between countries and in relation to covariates such as implemented public health policies, mobility, behaviour, or weather data.
