Annual Review 2012: Challenge 3 - Combating infectious disease

Finding new ways to prevent and treat the bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases that kill millions of people worldwide every year.

In this year's ‘Annual Review’, we explain how rapid whole-genome sequencing could be used to identify infectious bacterial outbreaks earlier, potentially ending them more quickly. Other stories include a study helping us understand why flu can be life-threatening for some people but have only mild effects in others, a number of papers exploring the interaction between vitamin D levels and tuberculosis, the discovery of a potential new target for HIV treatment, and the worrying rise of parasites resistant to malaria treatment in South-east Asia..

Further resources

Here are links to information relating to each of this year's 'Annual Review' stories in challenge 3:

Whole-genome sequencing of MRSA (page 29)

• News: Study tracks MRSA outbreak in real time
• Sanger Institute: Tracking MRSA in real time
• 2012 ‘NEJM’ paper
• News: Genome sequencing to dissect and control an MRSA outbreak
• 2012 ‘Lancet Infectious Diseases’ paper

Flu severity depends on host genes too (page 30)

• News: Gene can make mild-influenza life-threatening
• 2012 ‘Nature’ paper

Vitamin D and TB (page 30)

• 2012 ‘PNAS’ paper
• 2011 ‘PNAS’ paper
• Wellcome Centre for Clinical Tropical Medicine at Imperial College London
• Imperial College: Professor Robert Wilkinson

Key to HIV infection (page 30)

• Press release: Changing the locks
• 2011 ‘PLoS Pathogens’ paper
• UCL: Professor Greg Towers

Antimalarial resistance (page 31)

• Press release: Emergence of artemisinin resistance
• 2012 ‘Lancet’ paper
• 2012 ‘Science’ paper
• Wellcome Trust international strategy

Image: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Credit: Annie Cavanagh/Wellcome Images