Germ strategies for transmission

• passive transmission

  • after the causative agent of trichinosis (Trichinella spiralis) gets into the host, it sits around and waits for a Christian to eat it (because the Jews and the Muslims won’t)

  • it’s passed to humans completely by accident

• new victim eats old victim

  • Kuru, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)

• vector bites old victim, then new victim

  • malaria: from the Latin for “bad air,” though it wasn’t recognized that mosquitoes were the vector

  • plague: fleas to humans and humans to humans

• maternal-fetal

  • syphilis, AIDS (give mother AZT), rubella

• notice that all of these strategies represent, in essence, the organisms taking any available path

• modify host—sores, genital sores

  • syphilis, AIDS, gonorrhea, herpes, smallpox

  • if you are a STD, you can’t be too virulent because the transmitter still has to be sexually attractive to the recipient

• modify host—coughing, sneezing, diarrhea

  • influenza, rhinoviruses, pertussis, TB, cholera

• actively travel—through skin or feces

  • hookworm

Category: Pathology Notes