Kansas State University

Faculty represented in the journal Zoonoses and Public Health

Submitted by Karinne K. Cortes

The journal Zoonoses and Public Health, published online, features numerous presentations from the sixth International Conference on Emerging Zoonoses, Cancun, Mexico, in 2011. The conference was co-organized by Juergen Richt, professor at K-State, and Heinz Feldmann, professor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, National institutes of Health, Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont.

University faculty gave various presentations: food-borne zoonotic diseases by Curtis Kastner, director of the Food Science Institute; swine influenza by Wenjun Ma, assistant professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine; and different statistical approaches to confidence intervals by Stephane Guillossou, graduate student, Richt and H. Morgan Scott, professor of epidemiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

The meeting summary of nearly 40 presentations was supported by the Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases headquartered at K-State. The summary of these manuscripts in journal gives a snapshot of current research on numerous zoonoses caused by viruses and bacteria organized around 10 topics:

• The ecology of emerging zoonotic diseases; 
• The role of wildlife in emerging zoonoses;
• Cross-species transmission of zoonotic pathogens;
• Emerging and neglected influenza viruses;
• Haemorrhagic fever viruses;
• Emerging bacterial diseases;
• Outbreak responses to zoonotic diseases;
• Food-borne zoonotic diseases;
• Prion diseases; 
• Modeling and prediction of emergence of zoonoses.

This comprehensive survey with 11 original articles and five review articles is available with free access at: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/zph.2012.59.issue-s2/issuetoc