Conditioners of the infectious diseases dynamics

Resumo

The natural history of diseases is a concept in epidemiology that describes at the individual level the interaction of an individual with a disease stimulus, its clinical horizons, and transmission routes, which enable the identification of critical points for the prevention and control of infectious diseases. However, although this concept implies a dynamic process of exposure, contraction of disease, and cure or death, it does not provide an understanding of the dynamics of transmission of infectious agents at the population level in different scenarios, where anthropological, biological, clinical and social factors can act as conditioners for infectious diseases, that can manifest and transform in a variety of ways in different human populations. In this context, the objective of this work was to review the literature according to the Cooper (1988) methodology, to generate perspectives on the dynamics of infectious diseases, their conditioners and their interrelationship. It is demonstrated that environmental changes, pathogens evolution and host co-evolution, as well as behavioral and social set,  influence significantly the epidemic events, and mathematical modeling represents an important tool to analyze this influence.