Submitted by: Georgia Perona-Wright
They say troubles come in threes, and infections also rarely strike alone. Influenza virus kills through bacterial pneumonia; tuberculosis is cruelly exaggerated in people with HIV/AIDS; parasitic worms affect a third of the world’s population, each of them facing bacterial and viral infections too. Research into these diseases is driven by experts in a single infection, using elegant models of one pathogen alone. Data from patients show that simultaneous infections get a different response than each one alone, and exciting new discoveries are beginning to tell us why. Controlling this cross-talk promises to open a new era of synchronised medicine.