SARS, Mers and Other Viral Lung Infections

David S. Hui is the Stanley Ho Professor of Respiratory Medicine and Director of the Stanley Ho Centre for Emerging Infections Diseases at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shatin, Hong Kong). He graduated from the University of New South Wales (Kensington, Australia) in 1985. He then trained in respiratory medicine and sleep medicine in Sydney, Australia. He was heavily involved in the clinical management of patients with SARS at the Prince of Wales Hospital (Shatin, Hong Kong) during the major outbreak in 2003. He served as a World Health Organization (WHO) advisor, reviewing the clinical management of avian influenza A(H5N1) during the early human outbreak in Vietnam in February 2004, and has since been a regular advisor to the WHO on the clinical management of SARIs. He has contributed to WHO treatment guidelines (including those for the influenza A(H5N1) virus in 2007, the influenza A(H1N1) pandemic in 2009, and MERS in 2013) and the WHO training workshop on the clinical management of influenza A(H7N9) and other SARIs in May 2014. He was a member of the urgent WHO missions investigating the outbreaks of MERS in Saudi Arabia and South Korea in 2013 and 2015, respectively. David Hui's research interests include the clinical management of emerging SARIs, the safety of respiratory therapy in the post-SARS era, the efficacy of medical ward airflow in preventing nosocomial infections, sleep disordered breathing, and common airway diseases.Giovanni A. Rossi is the former chief of the Pulmonary and Allergy units and of the Cystic Fibrosis Centre at the G. Gaslini Research Institute and University Hospital (Genoa, Italy) and the former adjunct Professor of Paediatric Pulmonology at the University of Genoa (Genoa). He is now Chief Emeritus at the G. Gaslini Research Institute. Giovanni Rossi was Head of the Lung Cell Biology Assembly and a member of the Executive Committee of the European RespiratorySociety, of which he has recently been appointed Foundation Fellow. He also served as an associate editor on the editorial boards of several other respiratory, allergy and paediatric journals and has published >290 manuscripts in peer reviewed journals. His major areas of basic and clinical research have been the mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of a variety of respiratory disorders, including the interstitial, obstructive and infectious diseases. In the latter, his work has focused mainly on the characterisation of the host-virus interaction at the lower respiratory tract level, with the aim of developing novel strategies for the prevention and treatment of these high-impact respiratory disorders for which specific therapies are often not yet available.Sebastian L. Johnston is Professor of Respiratory Medicine and Allergy at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London (London, UK). He is Director of the MRC and Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma (London), is the Asthma UK Clinical Professor and is a former European Research Council Advanced Grant holder. He is also a UK National Institute of Health Research Senior Investigator. Sebastian Johnston edited Thorax from 2002 to 2010 and serves as an associate editor on the editorial boards of several other respiratory and allergy journals. He has published >380 scholarly manuscripts in peer reviewed journals and has 18 patents. Notable discoveries that have emerged from his work include establishing the viral aetiology of the majority of asthma and COPD exacerbations, discovering novel mechanisms of susceptibility to virus infection in asthma and COPD, and developing novel treatment approaches for acute exacerbations of these diseases. Sebastian Johnston is committed to capacity building for academia, industry and health services by training new basic and clinical investigators in asthma and COPD research. He also plays a significant role in public engagement and communication in the public domain.

Preface; Guest Editors; Introduction; List of abbreviations; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus; Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus; Interpandemic (seasonal) influenza; Avian influenza: H7N9, H5N1 and other novel strains; Respiratory syncytial virus; Human rhinoviruses