A woman’s innocuous cold symptoms mask a debilitating rare tick infection. A young man develops shingles then suffers blinding head pain later in life. After years of frustration, a family eradicates head lice forever.

Infectious follows on from Frank Bowden’s 2011 Gone Viral but deals much more with everyday infectious diseases - the flu, colds, sore throats and head lice.

It also tackles topical and critical issues in modern medical practice - the emergence of antibiotic resistance, the Ebola epidemic, the Lyme Disease controversy and the causes of chronic fatigue.