Institute of Medicine Forum on Emerging Infections: Linking Infectious Agents and Chronic Diseases

摘要

The belief that many long-recog-nized chronic diseases are infectiousin origin dates to the mid-nineteenthcentury, when cancer was studied as apossible infectious disease. In the1950s and 1960s, much biomedicalresearch was unsuccessful in confirm-ing microbial causes of variouschronic syndromes. Recent years,however, are marked by successfulidentification of several causal infec-tious agents of chronic disease such asHuman papillomavirus in cervicalcancer, but challenges and controver-sies remain