Table 2 Time line of a number of key technological and scientific advances in infectious disease classification
From: Epidemiologic data and pathogen genome sequences: a powerful synergy for public health
Date | Advance | Applications |
|---|---|---|
1670s | Microscope invented by Leeuwenhoek | Visualize bacteria, protozoa |
1850s | Puerperal fever identified as infectious and interventions implemented by Semmelweis [23] | Hospital infection control motivated by growing understanding of microbial etiology |
1864 | Cholera transmission by water proven by Snow | Risk factor (mode of transmission) and prevention measure for specific infectious syndrome |
1890s | Proof of parasitic origin (Grassi) and mosquito transmission (Ross) of malaria | Vector control |
1890s | Identification of microbial etiologies for tuberculosis, anthrax, and so on; Koch’s postulates | Targeted diagnostics, therapeutics, and move from syndromic diagnosis to pathogen identification |
1900-1930s | Discovery of filterable animal viruses [24] | Influenza etiology settled (previously thought bacterial) [25] |
1910s-1950s | Phenotypic subspecies taxonomy: serotyping [26],[27], phage typing [28] | Association of particular types with prognosis [27],[29], drug resistance |
1944 | Discovery of DNA as the genetic material [30] | Basis for genotyping tools for molecular epidemiology |
1970 | Restriction enzymes [31] | Basis for restriction fragment length polymorphism approaches, including pulsed field gel electrophoresis |
1975-1985 | Basis for variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) approaches to characterize microbes and their genetic relatedness | |
2000s-now | High-throughput rapid sequencing technologies | Microbial genome sequencing |