Infectious Diseases And Antibiotics Flashcards
What is a pathogen?
•microorganism that causes disease
What is a toxin?
• A chemical released by the pathogen
What are the types of pathogens? Give examples.
- Fungi : athlete’s foot
- Bacteria : cholera
- virus : flu
- Protozoa : malaria
How does infectious diseases spread to person to person?
• by a vectors
Carry the disease but not affected by it
What is malaria caused by?
• Protozoa spread by female mosquitoes
Humans and mosquitoes = host
Malaria = parasite
How can malaria be controlled?
- sleep under a mosquito net
- use insect repellent
- draining areas of stagnant water
- using insecticides to kill mosquitoes
What is meant by incidence?
- incidence of a disease is the rate at which new cases occur in a population each year
- usually given as cases per 10,000 or 100,000 people
- incidence can depend on climate and socio-economic factors
How can incidence depend on climate?
- warm/hot places may find rapid multiplication of vectors
* e.g. Malaria mosquitoes need water to breed so rainfall increase the incidence of malaria
How can incidence depend on socio-economic factors?
- infectious disease like cholera are affected by it
* there is a higher incidence in countries where there is no clean drinking water or proper sewage works
What are antibiotics?
- produced by some fungi and bacteria make it themselves
- they kill bacteria and fungi
- they do this by stopping growth and preventing metabolic reactions
- they do NOT kill viruses as viruses do not grow or have metabolic reactions that can be prevented
How should Antibiotics be used? Can also be harmful
- need to be used carefully
- doctors should only prescribe them when needed
- patients should take the full course
OTHERWISE resistant strains develop ( MRSA)
How can antivirals be used?
- antiviral drugs like Tamiflu are used to deal with viruses
* they inhibit the replication of viruses inside the host
