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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to concepts related to infectious diseases in humans.. Infection – transmission, entry/invasion after evading/overcoming defense, establishment, and replication of disease-causing microscopic organisms (pathogens) inside a host organism, and the reaction of host tissues to them and to the toxins they produce.
In biology, a pathogen (Greek: πάθος, pathos "suffering", "passion" and -γενής, -genēs "producer of"), in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ. [1] The term pathogen came into use in the 1880s.
3. Variable pathogenicity: Infection with pathogens can produce varying responses in hosts, complicating the process of showing a relationship between infection and the pathogen. [5] In some infectious diseases, the severity of symptoms has been shown to be dependent on specific genetic traits of the host. [6] [7] 4.
Cows are natural reservoirs of African trypanosomiasis. In infectious disease ecology and epidemiology, a natural reservoir, also known as a disease reservoir or a reservoir of infection, is the population of organisms or the specific environment in which an infectious pathogen naturally lives and reproduces, or upon which the pathogen primarily depends for its survival.
Vector-borne transmission, transmitted by a vector, which is an organism that does not cause disease itself but that transmits infection by conveying pathogens from one host to another. [32] The relationship between virulence versus transmissibility is complex; with studies have shown that there were no clear relationship between the two.
Even when a pathogen is the principal cause of a disease, environmental and hereditary factors often influence the severity of the disease, and whether a potential host individual becomes infected when exposed to the pathogen. Pathogens are disease-carrying agents that can pass from one individual to another, both in humans and animals.
Study of obligate pathogens is difficult because they cannot usually be reproduced outside the host. However, in 2009 scientists reported a technique allowing the Q-fever pathogen Coxiella burnetii to grow in an axenic culture and suggested the technique may be useful for study of other pathogens.
When pathogens encounter a susceptible individual and enter their body, it is called the exposure moment, and the individual turns into a host for those pathogens. After entering a host's body (which marks the beginning of the infection process), pathogens usually require time to multiply or replicate at their favorite site in the body (for ...