Infectious Disease

∞ generated and posted on 2015.12.30 ∞

Malady caused either by a microorganism or by an equivalent entity capable of both transmission between hosts and replication.

An Infectious Disease is caused by a pathogen that either is sourced from among one's own normal microbiota, is acquired from another infected individual, or instead is acquired from the environment (particularly other than from a conspecific).

Among non-microbial entities that are infectious are prions and transmissible cancers. Both exist as animal diseases but are relatively rare among infectious agents.

Note than not all pathogens are transmitted to hosts but instead can cause disease via a transmission of their products, notably toxemias caused by exposure to bacterial exotoxins, e.g., staphylococcal food poisoning.

The following is a list of a small subset of infectious diseases and related concepts:

Algae-caused diseases, Bacteria-caused diseases, Bacteriology, Emerging infectious disease, Fungus-caused diseases, Helminth-caused diseases, Mycology, Mycoses, Paralytic shellfish poisoning, Parasitology, Prion-caused diseases, Protozoan-caused diseases, Virology, Virus-caused diseases, Yeast infection