Multidimensional scaling analysis of virus diseases

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Viruses are infectious agents that replicate inside organisms and reveal a plethora of distinct characteristics. Viral infections spread in many ways, but often have devastating consequences and represent a huge danger for public health. It is important to design statistical and computational techniques capable of handling the available data and highlighting the most important features. METHODS: This paper reviews the quantitative and qualitative behaviour of 22 infectious diseases caused by viruses. The information is compared and visualized by means of the multidimensional scaling technique. RESULTS: The results are robust to uncertainties in the data and revealed to be consistent with clinical practice. CONCLUSIONS: The paper shows that the proposed methodology may represent a solid mathematical tool to tackle a larger number of virus and additional information about these infectious agents.