What You Need To Know About Infectious Disease
How Infection Works
Types of Microbes
The microorganisms, or microbes, that can cause disease come in different forms. Viruses and bacteria are probably the most familiar because we hear so much about them. But fungi, protozoa, and helminths are also big players in the story of infectious disease. Learn more about each of these five main categories, as well as a recently discovered one: prions.
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What do you know about infectious disease?
True or False: Growing evidence suggests that infections are behind many chronic diseases once thought to be caused by genetic, environmental, or lifestyle factors.
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Correct!Growing evidence does suggest that infections are behind many chronic diseases once thought to be caused by genetic, environmental, or lifestyle factors, including peptic ulcers and cervical, liver, and gastric cancers.
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Sorry, that’s incorrect.
Growing evidence does suggest that infections are behind many chronic diseases once thought to be caused by genetic, environmental, or lifestyle factors, including peptic ulcers and cervical, liver, and gastric cancers.
Infectious Disease Defined
- Sterilization
The process of destroying all forms of life, including infectious agents, from a surface, fluid, or biological medium with the use of heat, chemicals, irradiation, high pressure, filtration, or some combination of these methods.
National Academies
Search the National Academies Press website by selecting one of these related terms.
Source Material
- Fungal Diseases: An Emerging Threat to Human, Animal, and Plant Health— Workshop Summary (2011)
- Infectious Disease Movement in a Borderless World—Workshop Summary (2010)
- Microbial Evolution and Co-Adaptation: A Tribute to the Life and Scientific Legacies of Joshua Lederberg (2009)
- The New Science of Metagenomics: Revealing the Secrets of Our Microbial Planet (2007)
- Ending the War Metaphor: The Changing Agenda for Unraveling the Host-Microbe Relationship—Workshop Summary (2006)
- Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response (2003)
