Questions tagged [infection]
An infection is caused by the invasion of by pathogenic organisms (bacteria, viruses or worms) into a host. These pathogenic organisms live and multiply in its host and cause diseases by this.
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I need help identifying the source of my contamination in my viral titration experiments
I am relatively new to what I'm currently working with and as the title suggests, I am currently having some issues with my experiment (viral titration).
So, what I have been doing is the following:
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Does cooking kill all bacteria?
So I know that the general rules is that pathogen prone foods such as chicken shouldn't be consumed after 2 hours at room temperature. Cooking meat such as chicken is necesary as it kills the ...
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Why do flies and fruit flies exhibit two distinctive (but not exclusive) flying patterns?
I live near a forest with a canal, and often see fruit flies, they also sometimes come in our house and occasionally feed on bits of fruit. Also, sometimes I meet regular house flies here and there, ...
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Understanding infection rate of a complex network
Suppose we have a complex network of people and the spread of a disease is modelled as a branching process (Diekmann et al. 1998)
The rate of infection of the complex network is:
$r = \tau(n-2)-g$
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Can simultaneous double pathogen infections happen, or are they prevented?
Is there something in immunology that prevents a simultaneous infection with a 2nd pathogen? For example, I've never heard of someone getting both dengue and malaria together. Or, say, Ebola and ...
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How to calculate phage infection rate from decreased PFU counts?
Some experiments measured the effect of particular chemicals on the infectivity of lytic phages in terms of influence on the PFU/mL counts.
For example, the reduction of PFU/mL of exposed phages over ...
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Why do bacteria in a urinary tract infection (UTI) cause bleeding?
It seems that when a urinary tract infection happens, bacteria will cause inflammation to the lining of the urinary tract, and this will cause bleeding.
What is the exact process for the inflammation ...
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Exhaustion of 'memory' CD8 T cells
I've been reading literature on the exhaustion of cytotoxic CD8 T cells. In many of the papers I read, the authors aim to delineate molecular mechanisms that differ between exhausted and memory ...
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How does the first organism infected by a disease get infected?
How does a micro-organism causing some communicable disease infect the first organism it infected?
I was reading about HIV, when I found that HIV has jumped from chimpanzees to human beings. But, how ...
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Is the response to a vaccine correlated with the reaction to the disease?
I was wondering if the response to a vaccine correlates with the reaction to the disease.
For example, if someone had a strong reaction to a vaccine, this person would also have had a severe course of ...
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Why don't viruses cause wounds?
A simple mental model of a viral infection is that an infected cell emits a lot of virions and eventually dies. The emitted virions have a chance of infecting other cells. Nearby cells are at a higher ...
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COVID-19 exposure risk from passing joggers versus walkers
What is the COVID exposure risk from passing close by someone who is jogging relative to passing close by someone who is walking?
The reason I ask is with regard to going out for exercise, or to run ...
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What is the speed of human immune reactions?
It's easy to find general lists of immune systems: innate/adaptive, complement, phagocytes, B/T cells, and so on. Annoyingly, they are very skimpy on quantitative information regarding the speed of ...
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Do breakthrough infections spread attenuated virus?
No vaccines are 100% effective, so it's possible that patient A catches Covid-19 even after receiving two doses of vaccine. I understand that the risk is low, and the symptoms will generally be mild.
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Does a vaccine reduce the contagion "efficiency"?
Note: I am specifically interested in the question in the context of COVID, but general information is welcome as well.
If someone vaccinated still catches the COVID, is their capacity to infect ...
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Why there aren't any pandemic diseases by prions?
Learning biology in school, I became interested in the fact that there aren't any diseases by prions which are globally infectious (as far as I know), unlike diseases by viruses (ex. COVID-19, SARS ...
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Acquiring Covid-19 vaccination through kissing with viral vector vaccinated person
The mechanism of COVID-19 viral vector based vaccines (AstraZeneca - Vaxzevria, Johnsen, Sputnik V - Gam-COVID-Vac, Johnson & Johnson - Janssen, etc. ) is delivering the genetic information of the ...
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Does a virus that spreads more rapidly have less chance to evolve?
Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has been going on for a while, there are reports of many new variants, which have presumably arisen in the past year through mutation and spread through natural ...
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HPV. How do viruses persist outside the body?
The main route of transmission of human papillomavirus (HPV) is generally believed to be sexual. While fomites have been postulated for inexplicable infections, sexual health professionals regularly ...
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Do partial (nighttime) curfews curb the spread of epidemics (and via which mechanisms)? [closed]
Do partial (e.g., nighttime) curfews curb the spread of epidemics?
What is the (epidemiological) mechanism by which partial curfews curb the spread of epidemics?
Is there evidence from past or present ...
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Minimum and maximum exposure to virus
Is it possible to say that there is a maximum exposure time for the virus so that even an exposure time beyond that - will leave us with the same chances of infection?
If so, is there a way to ...
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COVID-19 infection data when partitioning to communities
Suppose we think of the disease in a certain country as follows.
We have a set of "communities" $C_1,\dots,C_k$ in the country where $k$ is some small constant, say $10$. Each individual is ...
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Why do some vaccines lose their efficacy with time?
Why do some vaccines lose with time their efficacy?
The two obvious examples that I have in mind are influenza and tetanus. The former case is clear, as influenza virus undergoes frequent gene ...
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Infectious deadly disease among free animals?
Sorry for the presumably naive question, I'm not a biologist and searched for that but didn't find a clear answer to this question.
What I would like to know if deadly infectious diseases are common ...
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In terms of Prions is there a possibility, that other proteins apart from PRPC could be misfolded [closed]
This is as from research PRPC seems to be the cause of all Prion related diseases. Thank you
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Why does touch the face make more likely to be infected?
Why is it risky to touch the face although there is no direct contact with into the nose, eyes and mouth?
Is there any possibility that pathogens infect us from our facial skin?
Suppose we have ...
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What causes the yellow and brown spots on our sour cherry tree?
So at the end of spring (maybe at the beginning of summer) our sour cherry tree started producing these yellowish/brownish spots on its leaves. Can you help me identify the couse of this? What can we ...
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What fraction of human cells gets infected during a viral infection?
As I understand, if a cell gets infected during a viral infection then it eventually dies. If an individual does not die of an infection, the percentage of cells that gets infected in the course of ...
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Factors of infection rate
I refer to J.H. Jones' Notes on R0.
Preliminaries
The standard SIR model consists of a system of three differential equations
$$ds/dt = -\beta s i$$
$$di/dt = \beta s i - \nu i$$
$$dr/dt = \nu i$...
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The role of duration of infectiousness in SIR models
I refer to J.H. Jones' Notes on R0.
The basic SIR model - as described in Jones' Notes - considers three factors that make up the reproduction number:
$\tau$ = the transmissibility (i.e., ...
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Which is more efficient as a germicide: UVC, Ozone or combination and why?
I've read many contradictory info about ozone vs UVC light irradiation and cannot come to a conclusion, I am totally confused.
As it commonly known UV germicidal irradiation is very effective against ...
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Difference between infectivity and cell fusion abillity of Virus. (COVID 19)
I'm a computational chemist who have interest in COVID-19.
As a physical chemist, I'm lack of basic knowledge for biology.
What is the difference between 'infectivity' and 'membrane fusion activity'?...
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How likely is to develop an infection from a single virion entering a single cell? [closed]
Is there any research (including mathematical or computational modelling) regarding how likely it is to infect an organism starting from a single virion entering a single cell?
I am interested in any ...
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Has there even been a clinical study where healthy volunteers consented to be infected with a pathogen?
I am curious if there has ever been a (modern) clinical study where a healthy volunteer was purposefully infected with a pathogen in order to test the effectiveness of a therapeutic or preventative ...
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Can virus and bacteria move on the surface? [duplicate]
Do viruses/bacteria have some motive mechanism? I mean if the virus/bacteria reach some surface by touching, can it move on that surface?
Life example: suppose the cooler is not so clean and has ...
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Why are victims of Covid19 being wrapped in plastic?
Several articles describe the unique ways Covid-19 patients are being buried.
For example, in this Reuters article about Israel:
These included decontaminating and hermetically wrapping bodies in
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What's the evidence against SARS-CoV-2 being engineered by humans?
A couple of colleagues suggested in a discussion that the virus that causes COVID-19 appears to be made by humans, since nature could not have produced such an efficient virus — that spreads so fast ...
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Do organisms use detergents to fight off viruses?
Common advice against contracting bacteria or viruses is to wash your hands because soap dissolves the viruses' shell. Does any organism exploit this effect to protect against infection, e.g. by ...
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Can plasmodial slime molds be infected by virus?
According to the definition, plasmodial slime mold consist of a "single cell" with thousands of nuclei. How would such a unique type of cell response to viral infection (if any)? Google search yield ...
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Has there ever been an approved viral infection treatment method based on the physical/mechanical properties of virus?
I imagined that typical cells and viruses could have very different physical properties or reactions to mechanical stresses, which makes selective targetting possible. For instance, some major ...
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Is the Common Cold an Immune Overreaction?
It's my understanding that the majority of symptoms associated with the common cold (runny nose, inflamed sinus, slight fever) are essentially the result of the immune system's response.
I've never ...
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Why is it so important to avoid infection of lacerations to the scalp?
There is supposedly something unique with regards to infections of the scalp, although I cannot remember, perhaps it was to do with the CSF and its build up? I have scoured the internet for hours but ...
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Is slow growth a virulence factor?
Many slow-growth pathogens (e.g. Mycobacterium tuberculosis, lentivirus, Rhabdovirus, Leptospira spp) are difficult to treat. In addition, a review of 61 pathogens found that
slower growing ...
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How can Haemophilus influenzae survive and grow alone in the human body?
Haemophilus influenzae gets its name from the fact, that it requires nutrients from blood in order to grow. More specifically, I see it mentioned that in vitro they often exhibit the pheomenon that ...
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Are there any proteins not found in the brain that are affected by prions?
A prion is an abnormally folded protein that is capable of causing otherwise normal proteins to also misfold and become prions. They are responsible for causing diseases such as Kuru and Creutzfeldt–...
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Can germs spread by tissues out of box?
Firstly, I don't know if this is the best site to ask this question. Please guide if its not.
Now my question:
If we take out a tissue out of its box, a new tissue comes out partially so we can ...
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Are most pathogenic bacteria facultative anaerobes?
I know that S. aureus and most gram-negative rods are facultative anaerobes. In terms of number of species, are most human pathogen-associated bacteria facultative anaerobes?
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What is this toad suffering from? Myiasis or chytridiomycosis?
I found this toad on Aug. 29th at this location: position on osm
I think it is a bufo bufo, approx. 10 cm long. The nostrils seemed to be completely filled with a grey matter and from the activity of ...
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How could be the concentration of airborne pathogens in a specific indoor space be measured?
I wonder if it is possible to measure the concentration of airborne pathogens in a specific indoor space in order to extract a percentage value. This value would be helpful to determine specific ...
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what will be the effect of cockroach bite?
I know the cockroaches are creepy for humans. But I want to know why humans are afraid of cockroaches and what will be the effect of there bite on my body. Can I touch them or if they walk over my ...