MCB 229 Spring 2000 Study Guide 24 Prof. Terry
Covers Lecture for May 9
This study guide is intended for you to use while you are
doing the assigned text reading. Quiz questions will be made with reference to
topics in this study guide. Quiz #24, based on questions from this study guide,
must be completed by midnight before the class on Tuesday, May 9. You will need
to create your "myWebCT" account and visit the MCB 229 WebCT page in order to
access this quiz.
Chapter 35. Epidemiology & Public Health
Microbiology.
- Epidemiologists must track not only the types of diseases present
but also understand their dynamics. A number of terms help to distinguish
different patterns of disease spread. What do the following terms imply:
sporadic, endemic, epidemic, outbreak,
pandemic?
- If you heard that a disease was epizootic, what
would this tell you? How about zoonoses?
- Epidemiologists rely on
statistical data. What do the following numbers mean: morbidity rate,
mortality rate, prevalence rate? Which term best describes the
following: "Between Jan. 1 and April 15, 2000, there were 931 reported new cases
of group A streptococcal infection in the United States."?
- How is the
incidence of disease in a population actually measured? Are predictions based
entirely on reported cases that present symptoms?
- How do common-source and
propagated epidemics differ?
- What is "herd immunity"? Under what conditions
does it arise? Public health agencies commonly use a certain % immunity as a
target goal in order to achieve herd immunity – what is this %?
- Do all
diseases evolve noticeably over human time scales? How does antigenic drift
differ from antigenic shift?
- In order to track any disease, epidemiologists
must identify the reservoir, the transmission route, the period
during which infected hosts act as carriers, and the pathway for
exit from infected hosts. Using the following diseases that we have
already studied, identify these parameters as best you can: tetanus, plague,
diphtheria, typhus, influenza, polio, pertussis, gonorrhea, AIDS, cholera, group
A streptococci, Staph aureus.
- What is a vector? A fomite? A
vehicle?
- Where do new (also called emerging) diseases come from?
What conditions favor such emergence?
- What are the 3 major ways of
attempting to control disease? Give an example of a disease which has been
effectively controlled by each of these approaches, and another disease which
has not.
- What are nosocomial infections? How frequent are they in the
U.S.? How can they be reduced? What are autogenous infections?
