PATHOGENICITY AND IMMUNOLOGY

Pathogenicity and Immunology

Pathogenicity and Immunology

Ans-1) When identifying a disease, the following three characteristics of a pathogen are critical to consider in order to determine the risk which will place the person infected at a greater risk.

Infectivity: The ability of the agent to enter a host and multiply to an infectious dose, thereby producing the infection or disease.

Pathogenicity: The ability of the agent to cause disease in an infected host.

Virulence: This term refers to the severity of the infection. A highly virulent strain of a disease agent will most always produce severe cases or death.

Ans-2) The reason why I choose the above mentioned three characteristics is discussed below:

Since infectivity is the ability of the agent to enter a host and multiply to an infectious dose, thereby producing the infection or disease, it is very important to know the extent to which an agent can cause infection with in the host. A prime reason for this consideration is due to the fact that a number of pathogens have the ability to transfer from one host to another. In this case, if the pathogen has a high level of infectivity it can probably transfer from one person to another, thus creating greater risk to not only the host, but also, to the rest of the community. The most common example of infectious diseases is influenza which occurs because the pathogens causing influenza have high infectivity and are easily transferrable from one person to another. For more chronic diseases, all the sexually transmitted diseases come under the umbrella of infectious diseases, high level of infectivity. Moreover, another factor which is significant to consider is that, pathogens with high levels of infectivity multiplies at a quick rate and spreads the disease rapidly throughout the host (www.idsociety.org).

On the other hand, ...