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In biology, a pathogen (Greek: πάθος, pathos "suffering", "passion" and -γενής, -genēs "producer of"), in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ. [1] The term pathogen came into use in the 1880s.
A human pathogen is a pathogen (microbe or microorganism such as a virus, bacterium, prion, or fungus) that causes disease in humans. The human physiological defense against common pathogens (such as Pneumocystis ) is mainly the responsibility of the immune system with help by some of the body's normal microbiota .
An infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. [1] An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable disease, is an illness resulting from an infection.
An opportunistic infection is a serious infection caused by pathogens (bacteria, fungi, parasites or viruses) that under normal conditions, such as in humans with uncompromised immune systems, would cause a mild infection or no infection at all.
Types of pathogenesis include microbial infection, inflammation, malignancy and tissue breakdown.For example, bacterial pathogenesis is the process by which bacteria cause infectious illness.
Pathogenomics is a field which uses high-throughput screening technology and bioinformatics to study encoded microbe resistance, as well as virulence factors (VFs), which enable a microorganism to infect a host and possibly cause disease.
The type order is the Burkholderiales, comprising an enormous range of metabolic diversity, including opportunistic pathogens. These pathogens are primary for both humans and animals, such as the horse pathogen Burkholderia mallei , and Burkholderia cepacia which causes respiratory tract infections in people with cystic fibrosis.
For example, Shigella is a longstanding World Health Organization (WHO) target for vaccine development, and sharp declines in age-specific diarrhea/dysentery attack rates for this pathogen indicate that natural immunity does develop following exposure; thus, vaccination to prevent this disease should be feasible. The development of vaccines ...