Impact factor in AIDS and other infectious diseases.

The impact factor (IF) is the most accurate system currently available for objectively evaluating the scientific productivity of individual researchers and institutions. It represents the quality level of a periodical and, at the same time, is a convenient reference parameter for the researcher to use in choosing an appropriate journal before submitting his own work for consideration. From this standpoint, we conducted an analysis of periodicals with the highest IF, including those strictly related to infectious diseases and HIV/AIDS, specialty journals, and general medicine reviews. This was done in order to determine just how much of these journals' total 1998 production consisted of articles concerning HIV infection and AIDS. This examination, conducted through a search of the MEDLINE database, predictably revealed greater interest in the HIV/AIDS topic among journals with the highest IF that focus on infectious diseases, though the same interest revealed when examining specialty journals and general medicine periodicals was not negligible.     

After 2015: infectious diseases in a new era of health and development

Running over timescales that span decades or centuries, the epidemiological transition provides the central narrative of global health. In this transition, a reduction in mortality is followed by a reduction in fertility, creating larger, older populations in which the main causes of illness and death are no longer acute infections of children but chronic diseases of adults. Since the year 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have provided a framework for accelerating the decline of infectious diseases, backed by a massive injection of foreign investment to low-income countries. Despite the successes of the MDGs era, the inhabitants of low-income countries still suffer an enormous burden of disease owing to diarrhoea, pneumonia, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other pathogens. Adding to the predictable burden of endemic disease, the threat of pandemics is ever-present and global. With a view to the future, this review spotlights five aspects of the fight against infection beyond 2015, when the MDGs will be replaced by a new set of goals for poverty reduction and sustainable development. These aspects are: exploiting the biological links between infectious and non-infectious diseases; controlling infections among the new urban majority; enhancing the response to international health threats; expanding childhood immunization programmes to prevent acute and chronic diseases in adults; and working towards universal health coverage. By scanning the wider horizon now, infectious disease specialists have the chance to shape the post-2015 era of health and development.     

Report on the 7th international workshop on the CCN family of genes

In this report, chairs of the 7th International Workshop on the CCN family of Genes, review the progress made in understanding the biological functions of CCN proteins (CCN1, CCN2, CCN3, CCN4, CCN5 and CCN6) with a particular focus on their implications in various pathological conditions, including cancer, fibrosis, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.