The 11th edition of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine welcomes Anthony Fauci to its editorial staff, in addition to more than 85 new contributors. While the organization of the book is similar to previous editions, major emphasis has been placed on disorders that affect multiple organ systems. Important advances in genetics, immunology, and oncology are emphasized. Many chapters of the book have been rewritten and describe major advances in internal medicine. Subjects that received only a paragraph or two of attention in previous editions are now covered in entire chapters. Among the chapters that have been extensively revised are the chapters on infections in the compromised host, on skin rashes in infections, on many of the viral infections, including cytomegalovirus and Epstein-Barr virus, on sexually transmitted diseases, on diabetes mellitus, on disorders of bone and mineral metabolism, and on lymphadenopathy and splenomegaly. The major revisions in these chapters and many

Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine

International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (vol. 10)

Arsenic and human health effects: A review.

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Anthrax as a Biological Weapon: Medical and Public Health Management

Control of communicable diseases

There has been an abundance of different bioterrorist attack scenarios and consequently an unclear biodefense strategy so far. We present a framework for bioterrorism risk assessment that we believe would be useful for policymakers and understandable without needing to be an expert in this field. We retrieved the Medline database via PubMed (from January 1987 to January 2009) and cross-referenced and reviewed the terms biological weapons, biological attacks, bioterror, bio(defense), bio(strategy) and epidemiologic models, and risk assessment. Additionally, we conducted an internet search with the same terms and strategy. We divided bioterrorist attacks into 3 categories: strategical (large-scale), operational (middle-scale), and tactical (small-scale). A bioterrorist attack is presented as a 4-component chain model, including perpetrators, agents, means of delivery, and targets. For any of these 4 components, we propose quantitative and qualitative risk assessment parameters. Here we present a simple scor...

A new model of bioterrorism risk assessment.

Bioterrorism--types of epidemics, new epidemiological paradigm and levels of prevention.

Obesity and fat distribution as predictors of aortoiliac peripheral arterial disease in middle-aged men.

Background: In 2011, Germany was hit by one of its largest outbreaks of acute gastroenteritis and haemolytic uraemic syndrome caused by a new emerging enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli O104:H4 strain. The German Haemolytic Uraemic Syndrome/Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (GHUSEC) outbreak had unusual microbiological, infectiological and epidemiological features and its origin is still only partially solved. The aim of this article is to contribute to the clarification of the origin of the epidemic. Methods: To retrospectively assess whether the GHUSEC outbreak was natural, accidental or a deliberate one, we analysed it according to three published scoring and differentiation models. Data for application of these models were obtained by literature review in the database Medline for the period 2011-13. Results: The analysis of the unusual GHUSEC outbreak shows that the present official assumption of its natural origin is questionable and pointed out to a probability that the pathogen could have also been introduced accidentally or intentionally in the food chain. Conclusion: The pos- sibility of an accidental or deliberate epidemic should not be discarded. Further epidemiological, microbiological and forensic analyses are needed to clarify the GHUSEC outbreak.

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Vladan Radosavljevic

Papers

A new model of bioterrorism risk assessment.

Bioterrorism--types of epidemics, new epidemiological paradigm and levels of prevention.

Obesity and fat distribution as predictors of aortoiliac peripheral arterial disease in middle-aged men.

Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak in Germany—clarification of the origin of the epidemic

Unusual epidemic events: a new method of early orientation and differentiation between natural and deliberate epidemics.