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Over 330 agents are used in the field of Infectious Disease, sold under more than 29,300 trade names worldwide. Drugs used against bacteria, parasites, and fungi take advantage of the biological nature of these organisms and disrupt their ability to grow and multiply, or utilize oxygen, sugars, proteins, and other nutrients. Viruses, however, do none of these things – instead invading our cells and converting them into “factories” that produce yet more viruses. Thus, most drugs used against viral disease interfere with various stages of cell invasion or the interaction of viral DNA/RNA with the host cell.

In this edition of the Code Red Podcast, Allen Roth discusses the COVID-19 pandemic with infectious disease expert Dr. Stephen Berger. Dr. Berger is a co-founder of GIDEON, the Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Network, and was the Director of Geographic Medicine and of Clinical Microbiology at Tel Aviv Medical Center. Board-Certified in both Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, his expertise gives valuable insight into the ongoing global pandemic. Dr. Berger also served in the United States Navy as a Medical Officer in the 6th Fleet.

The GIDEON is a Global Infectious disease knowledge management tool that maintains up-to-date information on the latest trends in epidemiology and treatment. All the information available through GIDEON is from sources that are peer-reviewed and backed by scientific evidence. The information available through GIDEON is collected from various sources including ProMED. The information is accessed and collated through a system of computer macros which includes a monthly search of PubMed against a listing of all GIDEON keywords, and titles/abstracts of interest are reviewed. All available National Health Ministry publications [print and electronic] are scanned, as are standard publications of WHO and the US Center for Disease Prevention and Control (US CDC). Additionally, relevant peer-reviewed publications are continually examined for relevant articles. The GIDEON database contained 119 events over the period 2016 to 2018.

Epidemiological data are rarely easily accessible or available in an easily analyzed format. There are efforts to circumvent these issues, such as Project Tycho and GIDEON <…>.

… a recent study by Murray et al. delineated biogeographic regions based on the popular GIDEON dataset …

Data from the Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Network (GIDEON) contain pathogen outbreak information at the country level obtained from case reports, governmental agencies, and published literature records.

The resource is intended for public health practitioners and specialists as well as educators and librarians. For the former, GIDEON serves as a tool for differential diagnoses and as a reference for treatment and epidemiological information. The reference functionality is useful to librarians, researchers, and educators.

… extracted the relevant data from GIDEON which contains information on the presence and occurrence of epidemics of human infectious diseases in each country as well as the number of surveys conducted in each country. This dataset is generally considered to be the most complete and up-to-date in the world and has been regularly used in previous comparative studies of pathogen diversity and epidemics.

GIDEON … founded in 1992, is the world’s premier global infectious disease knowledge management tool. It is an online application that helps users diagnose infectious diseases and stay up to date on the latest trends in epidemiology and treatment.

One of the most powerful applications worldwide is the GIDEON system, which helps diagnose 337 specific infectious diseases in 224 countries. Its database covers 1,147 microbial taxa and 306 antibacterial agents and vaccines. The information it handles is updated weekly and includes more than 20,000 images, graphics, infographics maps, etc. All this allows you to reach 94% of correct diagnoses, and that is why it is one of the most used systems in the field of medicine.
(translated from Spanish)