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Biology B1 > Fighting Disease > Flashcards

Fighting Disease Flashcards

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1
Q

What are the two main types of pathogen?

A

Bacteria

Virus

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2
Q

What are bacteria?
How big are they?
What do they do inside your body?

A

Very small living cells
1/100th of the size of a normal body cell
Reproduce rapidly

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3
Q

How do bacteria make you feel ill?

A 
Damage your cells
Produce toxins (poisons)
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4
Q

Viruses are not …

How small are they in comparison to bacteria?

A

cells

1/100th of the size or a bacterium

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5
Q

How do viruses replicate themselves?
What then happens to the cell?
What makes you feel ill?

A

They invade your cells and using the cells machinery, produce many copies of themselves.
It bursts releasing all the viruses
The cell bursting

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6
Q

What three things stop microorganisms getting into your body?

A

Skin
Hairs
Mucus in the respiratory tract

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7
Q

How does the body stop microorganisms getting into the blood through cuts?

A

Platelets (fragments of cells) help blood to clot quickly to seal wounds.

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8
Q

With low numbers of platelets the blood will clot more …

A

slowly

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9
Q

What happens when a microbe gets inside the body?

What is the most important part of this and where does it go inside the body?

A

The immune system kicks in
The white blood cells
Everywhere, patrolling for microbes

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10
Q

What are the three methods WBCells use to fight microbes? (names, no description)

A

Consuming them
Producing antibodies
Producing antitoxins

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11
Q

How do WBCells “consume” microbes to kill them?

2 stages

A

They engulf the microbe and then digest it

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12
Q

How do WBCells kill microbes by producing antibodies?

  1. What does every invading microbe have?
  2. So what happens when these are detected?
  3. What is the key property do these things produced have?
  4. What then happens to fight off the microbes?
A
  1. They have antigens, unique molecules on their surface
  2. A foreign antigen is detected so the White Blood Cell starts to produce proteins called antibodies that lock onto the cell and kill it.
  3. They are specific to that type of antigen so won’t lock onto any others
  4. The antibodies are produced rapidly and carried around the body to kill similar bacteria or viruses.
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13
Q

What will happen if the person is infected by the same pathogen again?

A

The WBCells will rapidly produce the antibodies to kill it, the person is naturally immune to that pathogen and won’t get ill.

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14
Q

How do WBCells kill microbes with antitoxins?

A

They produce them and they counter the toxins produced by the invading bacteria.

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15
Q

What does a vaccination do?

A

Protect from future infactions

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16
Q

When you’re infected by a new ….. it can take your ….. …. cells a few …. to learn how to deal with it. By this time you can be ….. ……

A

microbe, white blood cells, days, very ill.

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17
Q

What is injected in a vaccination?

What causes your body to produce antibodies to attack them?

A

Small amounts of dead or inactive microorganisms.

They still have antigens on their surface

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18
Q

What does the MMR vaccine contain?

A

Weakened versions of the viruses that cause measles, mumps and rubella.

19
Q

What does the vaccination cause the next time the body is infected with the same type of microorganism?

A

White blood cells will RAPIDLY mass-reproduce antibodies to kill of the pathogen

20
Q

What is the problem with some vaccines?

A

They wear off over time so booster injections are required to boost levels of antibodies.

21
Q

What are the two pros for vaccinations?

  1. Pro, two statistics
  2. Another pro
A

They have helped control lots of infectious diseases that were once common in the UK such as tetanus. No smallpox anymore and 99% reduction in polio.
Epidemics can be prevented if a large % of the population is vaccinated, because there are fewer to catch it and spread it.

22
Q

What are the two cons for vaccinations?

A

They don’t always work - sometimes they don’t give immunity

You can have a bad reaction to a vaccine, swelling or a fever, but bad reactions are rare

23
Q

What do painkillers and lots of drugs do and not do?

A

Relieve the symptoms and pain, they don’t tackle the CAUSE of the disease.

24
Q

What do antibiotics do?

What is important with these?

A

They kill or prevent the growth of the bacteria causing the problem without killing body cells
Being treated with the right one as they kill different types of bacteria

25
Q

What do antibiotics not do?

A

kill viruses

26
Q

Why is it hard to kill viruses?

A

Because it’s hard to find drugs that destroy the virus but not the cell when the viruses are are reproducing inside the cells.

27
Q

What causes bacteria to become resistant to antibiotics? (simple)
This means when you’re treated for an infection the ….. bacteria will survive.

A

They can mutate and sometimes these cause them to become resistant to the antibiotic.
resistant

28
Q

What happens to resistant bacteria when they survive antibiotics?

A

They survive and reproduce so the population of resistant bacteria will increase. This is natural selection.

29
Q

What is the problem with a resistant strain of bacteria?

For example….

A

They can cause a serious infection that can’t be treated with antibiotics
MRSA which causes serious wound infections is resistant to methicillin

30
Q

How should we slow down the rate of the development of resistant strains of bacteria?

A

Doctors should avoid over-prescribing antibiotics so they are not given for sore throats etc, only for serious illnesses.

31
Q

How can you test the actions of antibiotics on antibodies?

A

By growing cultures of microorganisms and then testing their effectiveness

32
Q

What are microorganisms grown in for testing?

A

A culture medium… usually agar jelly containing carbs, minerals, proteins and vitamins needed to grow.

33
Q

How is a Petri dish set up?
What happens after this to put the microorganism on the dish?
They then….

A

Hot agar jelly is poured into the shallow dish, to set.
Inoculating loops are used to transfer the microorganisms to the culture medium.
…multiply.

34
Q

What happens to test the antibiotics on an agar jelly dish?
Antibiotic resistant bacteria will….
Non-resistant strains will…

A

Paper disks are soaked in the antibiotic and are placed on the jelly after the microorganisms.
.. continue to grow around the disk
…. die.

35
Q

Why is equipment sterilized?

Why is it sterilized in the antibiotic test?

A

To prevent contamination

Unwanted microorganisms could grow in the culture and affect the results

36
Q

How are inoculating loops sterilised?

How are microorganisms prevented from getting into the Petri dish?

A

They are passed through a flame.

It has an airtight lid which is taped on.

37
Q

Why are the dishes kept at 25 degrees in school labs?

Why are industrial conditions hotter?

A

Because harmful pathogens are unlikely to grow at this temp

They incubate the bacteria to make them grow faster

38
Q

What did he think doctors were doing? What did Semmelveis do?

A

Spreading diseases on their unwashed hands. Told them to wash their hands in antiseptic solution cutting the death rate by 10% down to 2% dying.

39
Q

What did Semmelveis’s antiseptic solution do?

But what wasn’t discovered and what did this mean?

A

Killed the bacteria on doctors’ hands
Bacteria hadn’t been discovered so he couldn’t prove why it worked so when he left the death rates went back up as they stopped

40
Q

What has helped spread MRSA?

A

Lack of basic hygiene in hospitals

41
Q

How have we coped with bacterial infections in recent decades?
But what do bacteria do?

A

By using antibiotics so the death rate has fallen dramatically
Evolve antibiotic resistance e.g MRSA

42
Q

What two things has the over prescription of antibiotics done?

A

Increased likelihood of people being infected by resistant bacteria
Evolved more resistant bacteria called superbugs that are becoming more common

43
Q

What are the 3 dangerous things about bacteria?

A

They can mutate and produce resistant strains
A new strain could be antibiotic resistant so current treatments will now not cure an infection
A new strain may be one we haven’t previously encountered and so no one would be immune so it could spread rapidly and could cause an epidemic

44
Q

What are the 3 dangerous things about viruses?

A

They mutate often making it hard to make effective vaccines because changes in their DNA can change their antigens
They can evolve quickly to become deadly and infectious like flu viruses
Precautions can be taken to stop diseases spreading but many people travel by plane and vaccines and antiviral drugs can be produced but this takes time.
A flu pandemic could kill billions all over the world

Biology B1 (3 decks)

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