Epidemiology Overview
A field of science that studies health problems within populations.
What is epidemiology?
The first documented case of an infectious disease in a population.
What is index case?
An individual with no overt disease who harbors infectious organisms.
What is a carrier?
An agent that causes disease.
What is a pathogen?
An infectious agent is transferred from a reservoir to a susceptible host by contact or droplet spread.
What is direct transmission?
A global spread of illness and disease.
What is a pandemic?
A case that is classified as suspected for reporting purposes.
What is a suspect case?
An infected individual who can transmit a disease to others.
What is an active carrier?
Non-living factors involved in disease transmission.
What is a vehicle?
The transfer of an infectious agent from a reservoir to a host by suspended air particles.
What is indirect transmission?
The ability to produce a desired or intended result.
What is efficacy?
An infectious disease that spreads from human to human.
What is a primary case?
One who harbors an infectious organism in the nasal passages from time to time.
What is an intermittent carrier?
The habitat in which an agent normally lives, grows, and mutiplies.
What is a resevoir?
Disease that results from an infection transmitted to humans and other animals by blood-feeding anthropods, such as mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas.
What is vector-borne transmission?
This type of infection is localized to a particular people group.
What is an endemic?
Individuals who contract an illness through exposure to a primary case.
What is a secondary case?
Those who can transmit an agent during the incubation period before illness begins.
What is an incubatory carrier?
An inanimate object that can become contaminated with infectious agents and serve as a mechanism for transfer between hosts.
What is a fomite?
a vehicle that is, an inanimate object or material called in scientific terms a "fomite"—becomes contaminated with the infectious agent.
What is vehicle-borne transmission?
This type of science is more concerned with the why and how of epidemiology.
What is analytic epidemiology?
What is a common source?
What is a convalescent carrier?
An infectious disease that has jumped from a non-human animal to humans.
What is a zoonosis?
the transfer of pathogens from an infected host or a contaminated substrate to a susceptible host, where a biological association between the pathogen.
What is mechanical transmission?