Emerging Infections and the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine

Anatomic pathology as a subspecialty has been invaluable in understanding emerging and reemerging infectious diseases throughout many outbreaks and pandemics.

To describe the contributions of the Archives of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine to understanding emerging infections.

Medical literature and periodicals.

The Archives has a long tradition of supporting significant anatomic pathology research into these diseases through timely publishing of original research articles, patient cases, histopathology findings, reviews, and commentaries of public health importance. This was highlighted during the 1976 Legionnaires' disease outbreak in Philadelphia, when the Archives published the first description of the pathologic findings of Legionnaires' disease based on an autopsy study of 26 persons who had died from the novel infection. In that article, John Blackmon, Martin Hicklin, and Francis Chandler at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described the pathologic findings of severe pneumonia in all patients and were able to visualize the causative bacillus. The Archives continued to address the importance of emerging infections by publishing a special issue in February 1996 entitled "Emerging and Reemerging Global Microbial Threats." With the increasing importance of emerging infections, a second special issue on this topic was published in August 1997 entitled "Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases." In response to the Zika virus outbreak that began in Brazil in 2015, the Archives became the first peer-reviewed journal to devote a special issue to this emerging viral infection that was causing fetal deaths and congenital malformations, entitled "The Zika Virus Global Pandemic: The Latest Emerging Infection." During the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Archives continued to publish timely articles addressing many important issues about SARS-CoV-2 infections.