Environmental Microbiology And Infectious Disease Flashcards
What is ecology?
The study of the inter-relationship between various organisms and their shared environment
What are the 4 ways in which disease is spread?
- soil borne
- airborne
- water borne
- food borne
Soil borne diseases include?
- wounds eg tetanus, anthrax
- respiratory tract eg legionnaires, aspergillosis
- GI tract eg Bacillus cereus, Listeria monocytogenes
What are types of airborne disease?
- measles
- chickenpox
- legionnaires
- tuberculosis
- influenza
What are types of waterborne disease?
- typhoid
- Cholera vibrio
- E.coli
- Salmonella typhoid
- Clostridium botulinum
What are types of food borne disease?
- S. aureus
- Clostridium botulinum
- Clostridium perfringens
- Salmonellosis
- pathogenic Escherichia coli
- Campylobacter
- Listeria monocytogenes
- Norovirus
What are enterotoxins?
A toxin produced in or affecting the intestines
What are endospores?
A resistant asexual spore that develops inside some bacteria cells
Protists that cause food borne illness?
- Giardia intestinalis
- Cryptosporidium parvum
- Toxoplasma gondii
What are prions?
Proteins that adopt novel conformations that inhibit normal protein function and cause degeneration of neural tissue.
Eg mad cow disease
What are the 5 factors affecting food spoilage?
- water
- pH
- physical structure
- oxygen
- temperature
What are 4 types of food preservation?
- Refridgeration - slows growth of microbes
- Heating - reduces number of bacteria
- Drying and dehydration - sugar and salt reduce the availability for water for microbial growth
- fermentation
What are the 2 types of food borne disease?
- food poisoning
- food infection
What is food poisoning?
Results from the ingestion of foods containing microbial toxins, the microorganisms that produced the toxins do not have to grow on the host
What is a food infection?
Microbial infection resulting from ingestion of pathogen contaminated food followed by growth of pathogen in host
