Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
Who should still peer-review, for whom, and with what tools?
Published: 2026-11-02
Subjects: Arts and Humanities, Business, Education, Engineering, Law, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
In drafting On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin developed his thoughts through extensive correspondence with trusted colleagues, seeking feedback on ideas, manuscripts, and proofs. This informal peer-review process, like many others of its time, was based on personal trust, academic respect, and reputation rather than guided by any institution, and it helped pave the way for modern peer [...]
One Paleopathology: A Deep-Time Framework for Predicting Malaria Resurgence in the Climate Crisis
Published: 2026-10-30
Subjects: Archaeological Anthropology, Arts and Humanities, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Climate, Diseases, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Parasitic Diseases, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Malaria, the deadliest vector-borne disease in human history, is resurging under climate change, land-use change, shifting public health priorities, and declining global funding. In this Personal View, we argue that One Paleopathology, an interdisciplinary framework that integrates bioarchaeology, paleogenomics, historical (written) sources, paleoclimatology, and disease ecology, offers critical [...]
Heterogeneity in Microbial Systems: Scales, Drivers, and Consequences
Published: 2026-09-11
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Heterogeneity is a fundamental, multi-scale organizing principle of microbial life, transcending its historical treatment as mere statistical noise. This review synthesizes recent advances to construct a unified framework for understanding microbial heterogeneity across hierarchical scales—from molecular and cellular phenotypic diversity, through strain-level genomic micro-diversity, to [...]
Candidozyma auris (Candida auris) as a harbinger of novel fungal pathogens
Published: 2026-08-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Medical Microbiology, Medicine and Health Sciences, Microbiology, Pathogenic Microbiology
Mammals are protected from fungal pathogens by two evolutionary pillars: adaptive immunity and elevated body temperature. Anthropogenic climate change is eroding this thermal barrier, while a concurrent decline in human basal body temperature accelerates convergence from both directions. The emergence of Candidozyma auris (Candida auris), a thermotolerant, multidrug-resistant pathogen that arose [...]
Integrating primary and meta-analytic effect size estimates on the effects of PFAS and organochlorine pesticides on human health outcomes
Published: 2026-08-11
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences
Persistent organic pollutants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and organochlorine pesticides are among the most extensively studied environmental contaminants, yet the evidence base remains fragmented across primary studies and meta-analyses, limiting its ability to chart new research directions. To address this fragmentation, we developed a unified database that links primary [...]
Convergent biosynthesis of psilocybin in an ectomycorrhizal lineage: is the psychoactive end-product the selected trait?
Published: 2026-07-01
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
The fungivore-deterrence hypothesis, that psilocybin evolved as a chemical defence against arthropod fungivores via 5-HT receptor agonism, has become the working consensus in fungal chemical ecology, despite resting on a phylogenomic pattern of horizontal gene transfer among saprotrophs and remarkably little direct experimental evidence. Recent biochemistry shows that the ectomycorrhizal Inocybe [...]
Toward a unified tolerance–resistance framework across biological stressors and scales
Published: 2026-05-26
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences
Ecotoxicology and immunology both explore how organisms cope with external stressors that disrupt homeostasis, yet these fields have developed largely in parallel. While immunology has formalized the distinction between resistance (i.e reducing stressor burden) and disease tolerance (i.e. mitigating damage without reducing burden), ecotoxicology has traditionally focussed on stressor fate, [...]
Centering human cognition in epidemiological models
Published: 2026-05-14
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Epidemiological models (EMs) have traditionally treated human behavior as static or as a simple function of disease prevalence, limiting their ability to capture disease trajectories such as those observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that infectious disease is fundamentally a coupled human-pathogen system in which cognition and behavior operate on different timescales and must be [...]
Molecular War and Peace: the Concurrent Path to Antibiosis and Antibiotic Resistance
Published: 2026-04-23
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
The possibility of the emergence of proto-antibiotic and proto-resistance molecules in the prebiotic world, as primary elements involved in “molecular wars,” is examined in this conceptual review. Throughout the Earth's early history, prebiotic chemical processes produced molecules that associated both randomly and persistently. Over time, those configurations that achieved greater stability were [...]
Coexistence Nexus in practice: Operationalizing One Health across agroecological landscapes and zoonotic risk in Central America
Published: 2026-03-08
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Reconciling biodiversity conservation, agricultural systems, and human health remains a central sustainability challenge, yet these dimensions are often addressed in isolation. Here, we extend coexistence theory beyond its traditional focus on biodiversity conservation by integrating agricultural production and zoonotic risk within a One Health perspective. In doing so, we link biodiversity, food [...]
Meat’s Role as a Staple Food and the Opportunity to Improve Dietary Patterns in America
Published: 2026-01-09
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences
Many Americans choose to eat meat, with beef and poultry being their top protein choices. The best available evidence indicates that most Americans consume meat in amounts at, or near, levels modeled in the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. There is an opportunity, however, for many Americans to improve how they consume meat, including selecting leaner cuts and using healthful preparation [...]
A One Health Sustainability framework for nature-based wellbeing
Published: 2025-12-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Mental and Social Health, Public Health
Human health benefits of nature are increasingly documented, yet the ecological conditions underpinning these benefits and the sustainability of nature-based interventions remain poorly measured. We introduce an integrated One Health Sustainability framework that links human health outcomes with ecological integrity, landscape pressures, and sustainability dimensions. This framework provides a [...]
Bergenia ligulata: A Comprehensive Review of Its Phytochemistry, Pharmacology, and Public Health Potential
Published: 2025-11-25
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Bergenia ligulata (Wall.) Engl., commonly known as “Pashanbheda” or “stone breaker,” is a perennial herb of the family Saxifragaceae, widely utilized in South Asian traditional medicine for the prevention and treatment of urinary and renal disorders. This review synthesizes current evidence on its ethnomedicinal relevance, phytochemical composition, pharmacological properties, and potential [...]
Ecosystem structure can affect human health: a longitudinal study on Green Prescriptions
Published: 2025-10-08
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Health Psychology, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
The role of Nature in supporting human life, health, and well-being has been recognized and appreciated since ancient times, and has become a topic of scientific investigation with early studies dating back several decades. In recent years, this field has gained renewed attention and methodological refinement, driven by interdisciplinary frameworks and advances in environmental psychology, [...]
Ecological Kinetics and Evolutionary Dynamics of Antibiotic Resistance in Complex Environments
Published: 2025-08-28
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are common in the natural environment, including the microbiota of animal and human hosts. The local physical, chemical, and biological conditions of environmental patches and matrices vary in both qualitative and quantitative aspects. Often, these conditions diffuse in gradients, creating intersections that can either facilitate or inhibit the spread and evolution [...]