Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens.

Could some vaccines drive the evolution of more virulent pathogens? Conventional wisdom is that natural selection will remove highly lethal pathogens if host death greatly reduces transmission. Vaccines that keep hosts alive but still allow transmission could thus allow very virulent strains to circ...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Andrew F Read, Susan J Baigent, Claire Powers, Lydia B Kgosana, Luke Blackwell, Lorraine P Smith, David A Kennedy, Stephen W Walkden-Brown, Venugopal K Nair
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2015-07-01
Series:PLoS Biology
Online Access:http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4516275?pdf=render