Infectious diseases are categorized as illnesses caused by pathogenic microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria, parasites, or fungi that might live inside or on the body. Such diseases have been major threat worldwide and have a great impact on public health and the world economy. Among different types of infectious diseases, HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), tuberculosis, and malaria are known as the leading causes of deaths globally. Furthermore, varied types of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), such as Chagas disease, dengue, yellow fever, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis, and chikungunya, among others, are also considered to be major global threats. Although such NTDs emerge in tropical and subtropical regions, the risk of these infectious illnesses can be worldwide because of global economy and migration. With more than half of the world population at risk of such fatal illnesses, infectious diseases are classified among the most dangerous threats to society. Fortunately, detection of such infections in the early stages is estimated to significantly reduce the mortality rate. During the past decades, the development of universal and reliable methods to detect biomarkers for diagnostics and prognostics of the infectious diseases and the search for highly specific and sensitive biomarkers have been the most important challenges.

To promote communication between researchers and our knowledge on biomarkers in infectious diseases, we invite researchers to contribute their original research articles and reviews to this special issue.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Novel biomarkers in infectious diseases
• New approaches to identify biomarkers for diagnostics and prognostics of infectious diseases
• Clinical diagnostics and prognostics by biomarkers
• Studies on the role of new or already known biomarkers in infectious diseases
• Improvements of previous protocols for determination of biomarkers in infectious diseases
• Point-of-care testing of biomarkers linked with infectious diseases
• Economical cost and social burden of neglected tropical diseases: innovative models of care