COURSE INTRODUCTION Flashcards
What is Public Health? (2)
The prevention and management of diseases1 through surveillance and health promotion2
What are the 3 stages of the epidemiological transition (state what mortality and life expectancy was like too)?
- Pestilence and famine: ⬆️ mortality and ⬇️ life expectancy
- Receding pandemics:⬇️mortality and ⬆️ life expectancy and population growth is sustained
- Degenerative and man-made diseases: ⬇️ mortality (more)
What is the definition of Symbiosis (3)?
- the relationship between two or more different species that live closely together.
- There are several types or classes of symbiosis: mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism
- Can have positive (beneficial) or negative (unfavourable to harmful) relations
What is the definition of Commensalism?
One organism benefits and the other is neither harmed nor helped.
What’s the definition of pathogenicity?
Ability of microorganism to multiply and grow within host, giving no benefits to the host
What is the definition of pathogenic?
Capable of causing disease
What the definition of non-pathogen and what are three examples of non-pathogens?
- They rarely or never cause human disease
- Lactobacillus acidophilus
- Bifidobacterium longum
- Erwinia caratavora
What the definition of opportunistic pathogen and what are four examples of opportunistic pathogen?
- Don’t require a host and but can cause disease in an injured/ immunocompromised host
- Pseudomonas aeruginosa
- Burkholdaria cepacia
- Trichophyton mentagrophytes
- Escherichia coli.
What the definition of obligate human pathogen and what are four examples of obligate human pathogen?
- MUST cause disease in humans to survive
- Smallpox virus
- Measles virus
- Rabies virus
- Neisseria gonorrhoeae
What are the methodds of elimination of a pathogen(3)?
- Physical removal e.g. sneezing
- Starvation of nutrients = prevents growth
- Killing of pathogen via immune response
What are the methods of accumulation for a pathogen (3)?
- Adhesion to host tissues (specific/non-specific adhesion)
- Obtaining nutrients from host or other pathogens (leading to rapid growth)
- Proliferation in the body (survival)
What affects human-pathogen interactions (2)?
- Host factors (e.g. health status and host immune response)
- Pathogen factors (e.g. mutation and virulence factors)
What are the two modes of disease transmission?
- Horizontal transmission (between members of a population)
- Vertical transmission (from mother to child via breast milk, via birth, across placenta)
What is epidemiology?
The study of the incidence, distribution and possible control of a disease.
What is an endemic disease?
Endemic diseases are always present in a population in a given geographical area
What is an epidemic disease?
Epidemic diseases show high incidence in a wider area, usually developing from an endemic focus
What is a pandemic disease?
Pandemic diseases are dsitrubuted worldwide
What are the different types of epidemics?
- Common source epidemic – disease is spread from one source e.g. food or water (duration of one incubation period)
- Host-to-host epidemic – disease continuously transmitted from infected (duration of multiple incubation periods)
What is an incubation period?
The period between initial contact with an infectious agent and the onset of disease (=asymptomatic)
What is a latent period?
Patient is not showing symptoms and is not infectious to others.
What are the routes of entry and exit? (7)
- Respiratory tract
- Mouth
- Conjuctiva
- Skin
- Anus
- Alimentary tract (digestive tract)
- Urinogenital tract
How are pathogens transmitted between individuals (6)?
- Respiratory/ salivary spread
- Fecal-oral spread
- Venereal spread (through sexual organs)
- Vector (biting arthropod)
- Vertebrate reservoir (from animals to humans)
- Vector-vertebrate reservoir
