How Worried Should We Be About ‘Disease X’? Here’s What an Immunologist Says

Leigh Weingus
·3 min read
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Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic upended all of our lives in 2020, we're all on high alert wondering when and if another pandemic is right around the corner. 

Now, headlines have started surfacing about something called 'Disease X,' which experts are saying could be the next pandemic. One paper published in Cambridge University Press referred to it as "an inevitable but creeping danger."

Before you pull out the masks and hand sanitizer, let's take a closer look at exactly what Disease X is, and how worried we should be.

What Is Disease X?

According to Dr. Kirsten Hokeness, Ph.D., immunologist and professor of biological and biomedical sciences at Bryant University, Disease X is a hypothetical pathogen.

"Pathogens, particularly viruses, tend to reside in hosts all around us," she says. "The pathogen often won’t make the host sick; rather it uses the host to keep it present and alive in the environment."

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Sometimes, she says, this illness will spread among animals in the wild but it won’t impact the human population. "However, pathogens are always looking for new opportunities to spread. When humans interact closely with an infected animal, the pathogen has an opportunity to jump ship, mutate and then be able to infect human cells. Therefore, the world needs to be prepared for the next potential pandemic, or 'Disease X.'"

Related: If You Haven't Gotten COVID Yet, This Might Be Why

How Worried Should We Be About Disease X?

In 2018, the World Health Organization coined the term “Disease X” to represent a potential or hypothetical pathogen that could cause human disease in a population that has no prior immunity to it. "This makes it a 'priority disease,'" Dr. Hokeness says.

With that in mind, there's good news: There's no need to panic about Disease X—or at least not yet. "Since Disease X is a hypothetical pathogen there is no need to be worried about it in particular," Dr. Hokeness explains. "It’s simply a way in which we can organize and allocate resources to help us prepare for the next potential event. But it is fair to say that we should have some concern over what it could potentially be."

Related: How Long Is COVID Contagious? 

We learned a lot from the COVID pandemic, Dr. Hokeness adds, and we continue to learn. "We know that we need to have infrastructure that can support things like rapid deployment of testing, once said testing is available. We know better now how to develop communication plans and ways of quickly deploying safety measures. We have mechanisms for rapid approval of diagnostics. Information sharing is key and the infrastructure is there to do that."

Big pharma is continuously working on developing platforms from which we can quickly build vaccines, she adds, once we identify antigens of importance. "These are all things that were tested and improved over time during the COVID pandemic, and we can continue to work on this with the Disease X designation. It is helping us to be as prepared as we can for the next big one."

So while Disease X caused a ripple of panic this week, it's actually a piece of proof that people are preparing for the next pandemic—not that it's here yet. So, let's all breathe a big sigh of relief (but don't forget to get those flu shots and COVID boosters!)

Next up: These Are the Side Effects You Should Expect From the New COVID Vaccine

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