This Research Topic is the second volume of the Research Topic “Evidence-Based Advance and Management of Drug Treatment of Infectious Diseases”.
Infectious diseases are caused by microorganisms that release toxins or invade body tissues. The most common pathogenic organisms are bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, and helminths. Systemic infections usually cause fevers, chills, sweats, malaise, and occasionally headache, muscle and joint pain, or changes in mental status, and even septic shock-MODS. Infectious diseases have always threatened populations and caused great loss of life in history, but since the last century, with the discovery of antibiotics, historical trends have been reversed. It is reported that between 1990 and 2017, age-standardized disability-adjusted life year (DALY) rates decreased by 41.3% (38.8-43.5) for infectious diseases. However, in 2017, lower respiratory infections are still ranked as the third cause of DALYs.
Drug therapy is the one of most critical management strategies for infectious diseases. Efficacy and safety of drug therapy should always be considered, especially in elders, neonates and immunosuppressed patients. Off-label drug therapy has been performed for complex infectious diseases, especially for new emerging infectious diseases. However, off-label drug therapy can be extremely complex: some are prone to rational use, while others are more susceptible to the issues of irrational use. With the increasing rate of publication of data in this area, new evidence for the efficacy and safety of different treatment approaches is constantly developing. Thus, rigorous analysis of such data is imperative, which will guide future clinical practice and guidelines.
This Research Topic is a project based both in the Frontiers in Pharmacology sections 'Pharmaceutical Medicine and Outcomes Research' and 'Ethnopharmacology', and welcomes studies on new evidence of advance and management of drug treatment of infectious diseases, specifically welcoming original Clinical Research (RCTs), cohort studies, Reviews and Systematic Reviews. We also welcome meta-analysis approaches as a component of such articles. Specifically, in terms of Review articles, this Research Topic invites extensive reviews focusing on the post-market of new drugs for infectious diseases which have been approved by the FDA and EMA in recent years. Where studies of treatments include approaches derived from traditional medicine – including those licensed by the CFDA - peer-review will only be considered in Ethnopharmacology, without exception, and clinical trial articles (RCTs) involving such traditional provenance will not be considered for review.
This Topic invites qualified systematic reviewers to perform pre-selected systematic reviews. Qualified systematic reviewers are those who had ever published at least five outstanding systematic reviews which notably included on RCTs or cohort studies as first authors, or who had published at least two Cochrane reviews as first authors.
All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the
Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version
here).