Infectious Diseases

Children help reveal diabetes trigger

(Medical Xpress)—Cases of type 1 diabetes in children mirror the spread of flu – suggesting it is triggered by an infection carried by wild animals.

Jun 14, 2013
popularity not rated yet | comments 1

Heroin availability increasing across Washington state

New data from the University of Washington's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute indicates increases in heroin availability, abuse and deaths across the state, particularly among young adults ages 18-29. These increases are ...

Jun 12, 2013
popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Infectious diseases, also known as contagious diseases or transmissible diseases, and include communicable diseases, comprise clinically evident illness (i.e., characteristic medical signs and/or symptoms of disease) resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual host organism. In certain cases, infectious diseases may be asymptomatic for much or all of their course. Infectious pathogens include some viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, multicellular parasites, and aberrant proteins known as prions. These pathogens are the cause of disease epidemics, in the sense that without the pathogen, no infectious epidemic occurs.

Transmission of pathogen can occur in various ways including physical contact, contaminated food, body fluids, objects, airborne inhalation, or through vector organisms. Infectious diseases that are especially infective are sometimes called contagious and can be easily transmitted by contact with an ill person or their secretions. Infectious diseases with more specialized routes of infection, such as vector transmission or sexual transmission, are usually regarded as contagious but do not require medical quarantine of victims.

The term infectivity describes the ability of an organism to enter, survive and multiply in the host, while the infectiousness of a disease indicates the comparative ease with which the disease is transmitted to other hosts. An infection is not synonymous with an infectious disease, as some infections do not cause illness in a host.

This text uses material from Wikipedia licensed under CC BY-SA

Latest Spotlight News

New virus isolated from patients with severe brain infections

Researchers have identified a new virus in patients with severe brain infections in Vietnam. Further research is needed to determine whether the virus is responsible for the symptoms of disease.

New drug reverses loss of brain connections in Alzheimer's disease

The first experimental drug to boost brain synapses lost in Alzheimer's disease has been developed by researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. The drug, called NitroMemantine, combines two ...

Voices may not trigger brain's reward centers in children with autism, research shows

In autism, brain regions tailored to respond to voices are poorly connected to reward-processing circuits, according to a new study by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Quality of waking hours determines ease of falling sleep

The quality of wakefulness affects how quickly a mammal falls asleep, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report in a study that identifies two proteins never before linked to alertness and sleep-wake ...

Decoding Rett syndrome: New pieces to the puzzle

(Medical Xpress)—Rett Syndrome is a neurological disorder that affects about 1 in 10,000 girls. Back in 1992, University of Edinburgh researcher Adrian Bird discovered that the protein, MeCP2, plays a major ...

Statins plus certain antibiotics may set off toxic reaction, study says

(HealthDay)—Doctors should avoid ordering certain antibiotics for older patients who take cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, such as Lipitor, Canadian researchers say.

More patients getting lab-grown body parts

By the time 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan finally got a lung transplant last week, she'd been waiting for months, and her parents had sued to give her a better chance at surgery. Her cystic fibrosis was threatening ...

New compound excels at killing persistent and drug-resistant tuberculosis

An international team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has identified a highly promising new anti-tuberculosis ...

'Undruggable' may be druggable: A new target for cancer drug development

Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have identified in the most aggressive forms of cancer a gene known to regulate embryonic stem cell self-renewal, beginning a creative search for a drug that can block its activity.

Researchers demonstrate use of stem cells to analyze causes, treatment of diabetes

A team from the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute and the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center of Columbia University has generated patient-specific beta cells, or insulin-producing cells, that accurately reflect ...