session 14 Flashcards
Why is the vagina acidic
It is acidic because there is a certain microbe in the vagina that ingests glycogen in vagina and creates a lactic acid making the vagina acidic
What is the pH of the vagina before puberty
The pH is neutral
What is pathogenesis
This is the process of a microbe causing disease in humans
What is virulence
This is the ability of a pathogen to cause infection in a host. A highly virulent bacteria is a stronger pathogen than a weaker one
How is virulence measured
A population of organisms is given a pathogen and the cells of the pathogen that kill 50% of the population.
What is attenuation and why does it happen
Attenuation is the decrease and loss of virulence, especially when kept in a lab for a long time. It happens because weakly virulent muatants grow faster than virulent pathogens because the virulent have no advantage any longer.
What is an attenuated vaccine
An attenuated vaccine in the form of a pathogen has lost its ability to be dangerous. So you’re giving the body a live form of the vaccine that cant affect you too much so it is not given to immunocompromised patients
Why do pathogens lose their virulence when you culture them
This is because the mutants will have an advantage on the culture because they are not using their resources on anything extra like toxins that way they can use all energy to create more of themselves meaning those will be more abundant in the culture compared to highly virulent strains
What is the sequence for microbial pathogenesis
Exposure, adherence, invasion, multiplication, then toxicity or invasiveness
How is bacteria adherence facilitated?
it is facilitated through bacterial structures like slime layer, fimbriae
What is invasion
This is the pathogens ability to enter the host cell
What is multiplication
This refers to the growth of microbes in the host cell
What is a virulence factor
It is anything a microbe has that increases its virulence
What’s the difference between exotoxins and endotoxins
Exotoxins release toxins as they grow while endotoxin is the lipopolysaccharide of the outer membrane of the pathogen is a toxin
