Reflections on a Global Crisis

Reflections on a Global Crisis: History

Please note this is an old version of this entry, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Subjects: Infectious Diseases

Contributor: Stephen A. Bustin

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on global health, economies, and daily life, prompting an unprecedented surge in scientific research and collaboration. This collection of articles published in MDPI’s Encyclopedia captures a diverse range of perspectives on the pandemic and provides a multidisciplinary perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic, illustrating its biological, social, cultural, and institutional dimensions. Together, these contributions form a coherent and enduring resource for understanding arguably the most transformative public health events of the 21st century. The contributions can be grouped into a number of categories:

COVID-19

Medical Mechanisms and Pathophysiology

These papers provide an essential biomedical context by examining the direct biological impacts of SARS-CoV-2 and help clarify how SARS-CoV-2 disrupts physiological systems. Topics include analyses of vascular dysfunction via the Angiopoietin/Tie axis (Contribution 2); renal complications across SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 (Contributions 3 and 11); and organ-specific pathology in the lungs (Contribution 12), brain (Contributions 9 and 29), and kidneys. Contribution 17 reviews the auditory and vestibular symptoms, such as tinnitus, vertigo, and hearing loss, associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection and considers the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms. Other contributions detail gross pathology (Contribution 8), Bell’s palsy (Contribution 6), the importance of detecting asymptomatic individuals to prevent the spread of the disease (Contribution 27), and the molecular interaction between spike protein and ACE2 (Contribution 28), offering insights into mechanisms of infection and damage. Understanding these mechanisms is vital for clinical treatment, risk stratification, and the development of targeted interventions.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/encyclopedia5030094

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