Intracellular Infectious Diseases

The infectious diseases caused by intracellular pathogens pose the most profound impact on public health. For instance, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Plasmodium falciparum and human immunodeficiency virus, the causative agents of tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS, respectively, infect more than a third of the global population and claim several millions of lives each year, with all three together being the top killers in developing countries. Despite being caused by different organisms, the intracellular infectious diseases present a series of challenges in emergency, infection persistence, and drug resistance, highlighting the urgent need for new and deeper insights into surveillance, pathobiology of these diverse invaders and disease interventions. In spite of their biological difference, the etiologic agents have much in common, such as requiring to overcome natural killing and nutrient supply to survive within their eukaryotic host cells, prone to drug resistance making the infectious diseases untreatable, persistent infection requiring complex combination therapy to control the disease, and highly transmissibility, which provide concrete examples reflecting general problem for disease control.

This Research Topic aims to collect articles about basic science and clinical research of the intracellular infectious diseases. Intracellular pathogens invade, survive, replicate and try to establish persistent infection in mammalian cells, and could release from the host cell at the end of their infection cycle. Intracellular pathogens infecting humans include, but not limited to, viruses, certain protozoa that belong to the Apicomplexans (Plasmodium spp., Toxoplasma gondii, Cryptosporidium parvum), Trypanosomatids (Leishmania spp. and Trypanosoma cruzi), certain bacteria (Chlamydia trachomatis, Chlamydophila pneumonia, Chlamydia psittaci, Anaplasma phagocytophilum, Ehrlichia chaffeensis, Coxiella burnetii, Mycobacterium leprae, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and certain fungi (Pneumocystis jirovecii).

In this Research Topic, we welcome research articles on intracellular pathogens infection, related to epidemiology, new technologies for the diagnostics, pathogenesis, therapeutics, immune response, development of new drugs and vaccines, interaction between the host and pathogen, and patient management. Reviews, and case reports about this research topic, Commentary and opinion articles addressing these intracellular infectious diseases are also welcomed.

We hope that this Research Topic will help the unified consideration of these intracellular infectious diseases, provide more inspiration for the control and prevention of these diseases by the intersection of disciplines, and would aid in fighting and even eliminate the diseases.