Chronic Health Consequences of Acute Enteric Infections: A Case of the Blind Men and the Elephant

摘要

Both guest editors currently serve in an unpaid advisory capacity for the Old Herborn University Foundation, which was established in 2003 as a non-profit institution dedicated to the promotion of science and research in the field of medicine, biomedical, and life sciences. This Foundation annually convenes a small group of experts for a two-day meeting in Herborn, Germany, for presentations and discussions usually focused on the gut microbiota and its host. In addition, the guest editors work for the US Department of Defense (Riddle) and the non-profit organization PATH (Walker) where they conduct research and development efforts to develop vaccines against enteric pathogens. Their experiences in this field and with the series of topics covered by the Old Herborn University Foundation's annual seminar series led them to invite the contributors to this supplement to prepare this set of manuscripts which, taken together, should provide insight on new developments in medically important host microbiota interactions.