Exam 1 Lecture 3 Flashcards
Two steps to interrupt infection disease
Isolation and Identification
First step of infection is to:
Colonize
What happens after a pathogen colonizes a replicative niche?
Multiplies, and once a significant amount of multiplication occurs, this can cause an infection
How does the body respond to multiplication of a pathogen?
Immune response is initiated to cause fever, involving 3 cytokines: IL-1, IL-6, and TNF-alpha
Diacrisis
dia = through; krisis = a judgment
Synonym for diagnosis
Diagnosis
the determination of the nature of a disease
What is the first step to formulating a diagnosis?
History! It is important to ask plentiful and specific questions that can be used to formulate an accurate hypothesis.
Examples of questions to ask during a history
What is the problem? (chief complaint) What makes it worse? Did you travel? What do you eat? What are your personal habits? (etc.)
Once you have the patient’s history, what do you do with it?
- Form a hypothesis
- Perform physical exam
- Run some imaging/tests using information gathered
- Prepare treatment plan
- Repeat and refine hypothesis in between these steps as necessary
Etiological agent
viable microorganism, or its toxin, that may cause disease in humans
Why is identification of etiological agents important?
- determine nature of disease
- predict course and potential outcome(s)
- tailor therapy: apply specific interventions to a clearly defined problem
- exclude non-infectious causes of symptoms
Sterile specimen example
urine (depending on how it is collected) AND blood (assuming that the patient is free of bloodborne pathogens like HIV)
Non-sterile site with microbiota example
Colon
Why is it important to identify specimens?
to develop accurate hypothesis
Methods of examination
Bright field, dark field, and fluorescence microscopy
2 types of fluorescence microscopy
direct and indirect, both using fluorophore
3 types of cultures
nutrient, selective, indicator
nutrient culture
grows just about everything, particularly designed to grow organisms that are fastidious