Factors Influencing the Seasonal Patterns of Infectious Diseases

The recognition of seasonal patterns in infectious disease occurrencedates back at least as far as the hippocratic era, but the mechanismsunderlying these fluctuations remain poorly understood. many classesof mechanistic hypotheses have been proposed to explain seasonalityof various directly transmitted diseases, including at least the following;human activity, seasonal variability in human immune system function,seasonal variations in vitamin d levels, seasonality of melatonin, andpathogen infectivity. in this short paper will briefly discuss the role ofthese factors in the seasonal patterns of infectious diseases.