terms associated with Infectious disease Flashcards
Person or animal that harbors the infectious agent/disease and can transmit it to others but does not demonstrate signs of the disease
Carrier
Exposure to a source of an infection; a person who has been exposed. Contact does not imply infection; it implies possibility of infection.
Contact
Capable of being transmitted from person to person by contact or proximity. Does not need or utilize a vector.
Contagious
An organism that harbors a parasitic, mutualistic, or commensalism guest. The host is the house & the parasite is the freeloader.
Host
An organism that lives on or in a host organism and gets its food from or at the expense of its host. Three main classes of human parasites are protozoa, helminths, and ectoparasites.
Parasite
An infectious agent or organism that can produce disease.
Pathogen
Invasion of the body tissues of a host by an infectious agent, regardless if it causes disease or not.
Infection
A pathway into the host that gives an agent access to tissue that will allow it to multiply or act.
Portal of entry
A population of organisms or the specific environment in which an infectious pathogen naturally lives and reproduces; usually a living host of a certain species.
Reservoir
A pathogen that is transmissible from non-human animals (typically vertebrates) to humans.
Zoonosis
An increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease above what is normally expected in that population and area.
Epidemic
Carries the same definition of epidemic but is often used for a more limited geographic area.
Outbreak
The constant presence of an agent or health condition within a given geographic area or population.
Endemic
Any of a group of viruses that are transmitted between hosts by mosquitoes, ticks, and other arthropods.
Arbovirus (arthropod-borne virus)
Resistance developed in response to an antigen (pathogen or vaccine) characterized by the presence of antibody produced by the host.
Immunity, active
When a majority of a given group is resistant/immune to a pathogen, they achieve “____________”. This confers protection to unvaccinated or susceptible individuals/group by reducing the likelihood of infection or spread.
Immunity, herd
Transfer of active humoral immunity of ready-made antibodies produced by another host or synthesized. This is used when there is a high risk of infection & insufficient time for the body to develop its own immune response. Short Term!
Immunity, passive
Describes any illness, impairment, degradation of health, chronic, or age-related disease.
Morbidity
Time interval from a person being infected to the onset of symptoms of an infectious disease.
Incubation period
Time interval from a person being infected to the time of infectiousness of an infectious disease.
Latency period
An infection that is nearly or completely asymptomatic. The infected person with this is an asymptomatic carrier of the infection.
Subclinical Infection
A combination of symptoms, characteristic of a disease, or health condition; sometimes refers to a health condition without a clear cause. Greek for “concurrence.”
Syndrome
Measure of death in a defined population during a specified time interval, from a defined cause.
Mortality rate
Transmission occurs between an infected person and a susceptible
person via direct physical contact with blood or body fluids.
a) Person to Person
Direct contact (infection):
Transmission occurs when there is no direct human-to-human contact.
Contact occurs from:
(a) Vehicle Borne: Person to contaminated surface/object to
person
(b) Vector Borne: Person to vector (mosquitoes,
flies/mites/fleas/tick/rodent/dogs) to person
Indirect contact (infection)
often indicate the “onset of a disease” before more diagnostically specific signs and symptoms develop.
prodrome (or prodromal symptoms),
