- Commentary
- Published:
Emerging zoonotic diseases: An opportunity to apply the concepts of nidality and one-medicine
Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine volume 10, pages 260–262 (2005)
Abstract
The use of animals as sentinels of human disease revolves around the concept of nidality. That is, an agent of disease occupies a particular ecologic niche and alterations in that niche will change the function of that agent relative to traditional host-agent-environment relationships. Nidality is a derivation of the root word nidus. Nidus is defined as a nest or breeding place, particularly a place where microbes such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, as well as other organisms and larger parasites, are located and multiply. Application of the concept of nidality and development of prevention strategies has most frequently been associated with military campaigns and interruption of tick-borne infections.
Modern usage of the phrase “one-medicine” was popularized in the United States and Europe by Calvin Schwabe and the concept is attributed to Rudolph Virchow. It is applied today to the study of zoonotic disease and interventions in rural agricultural communities that share close living arrangements between people and their families, their pastoral work environment, and the animals for which they care.
Integration of the two concepts of one-medicine and nidality provides an opportunity to apply a systems approach (i.e. general systems theory) to dealing with emerging zoonotic diseases in today’s global agricultural and industrial settings.
References
Herbold JR, Heuschele WP, Berry RL, Parsons MA. Reservoir of St. Louis Encephalitis Virus in Ohio bats. Am J Vet Res. 1983;44:1889–1893.
Herbold JR, Wolfe WH, Wright JA. Health risk assessment for world-wide deployment of air force personnel. Mil Med. 1984;149:82–86.
Herbold J. Symposium: Public health in the new millennium—introduction. J Am Vet Med Assoc. 2000;217:1812.
Herbold JR. Now is the time to reconnect medicine and public health practice—planning for pandemics, surveillance of emerging infectious diseases, and preventive and interventive medical regimens in the face of disease outbreaks. Tx Heart J (Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Influenza and Cardiovascular Disease: Science, Practice, and Policy). Dec 2003.
Allen LJS, Flores DA, Ratnayake RK, Herbold JR. Discretetime deterministic and stochastic models for the spread of Rabies. App Math Comp. 2002;132:271–292.
Hall SD 3rd, Herbold J, England EC. Food for thought: the use of hazard and critical control point analysis to assess vulnerability of food to terrorist attack in deployment locations. Mil Med. 2002;167:1006–1011.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Herbold, J.R. Emerging zoonotic diseases: An opportunity to apply the concepts of nidality and one-medicine. Environ Health Prev Med 10, 260–262 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02897700
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02897700