Lesson Overview. 35.3 Fighting Infectious Disease. THINK ABOUT IT. More than 200 years ago, English physician Edward Jenner noted that milkmaids who contracted a mild disease called cowpox didn’t develop smallpox. At the time, smallpox was a widespread disease that killed many people. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Slide 1Fighting Infectious Disease
THINK ABOUT IT
More than 200 years ago, English physician Edward Jenner noted that
milkmaids who contracted a mild disease called cowpox didn’t
develop smallpox.
At the time, smallpox was a widespread disease that killed many
people.
Could people be protected from smallpox by deliberately infecting
them with cowpox?
Lesson Overview
Lesson Overview
How do vaccines and externally produced antibodies fight
disease?
A vaccine stimulates the immune system with an antigen. The
immune
system produces memory B cells and memory T cells that quicken
and
strengthen the body’s response to repeated infection.
Antibodies produced against a pathogen by other individuals or
animals
can be used to produce temporary immunity.
Lesson Overview
Acquired Immunity
Dr. Edward Jenner performed an experiment in which he put fluid
from a cowpox patient’s sore into a small cut he made on the arm of
a young boy named James Phipps. As expected, James developed mild
cowpox.
Two months later, Jenner injected James with fluid from a smallpox
infection. The boy didn’t develop smallpox.
The boy’s cowpox infection had protected him from smallpox
infection.
Lesson Overview
Acquired Immunity
The injection of a weakened form of a pathogen, or of a similar but
less dangerous pathogen, to produce immunity is known as a
vaccination.
The term comes from the Latin word vacca, meaning “cow,” as a
reminder of Jenner’s work.
Lesson Overview
Active Immunity
Active immunity may develop as a result of natural exposure to an
antigen (fighting an infection) or from deliberate exposure to the
antigen (through a vaccine).
Vaccination stimulates the immune system with an antigen.
The immune system produces memory B cells and memory T cells that
quicken and strengthen the body’s response to repeated
infection.
Lesson Overview
Passive Immunity
Antibodies produced against a pathogen by other individuals or
animals can be used to produce temporary immunity. If externally
produced antibodies are introduced into a person’s blood, the
result is passive immunity.
Passive immunity lasts only a short time because the immune system
eventually destroys the foreign antibodies.
Lesson Overview
Passive immunity can occur naturally or by deliberate
exposure.
Natural passive immunity occurs when antibodies are passed from a
pregnant woman to her fetus (across the placenta), or to an infant
through breast milk.
For some diseases, antibodies from humans or animals can be
injected into an individual.
For example, people who have been bitten by rabid animals are
injected with antibodies for the rabies virus.
Lesson Overview
Lesson Overview
Public health measures help prevent disease by monitoring and
regulating
food and water supplies, promoting vaccination, and promoting ways
that
avoid infection.
Antibiotics can kill bacteria, and some antiviral medications can
slow down
viral activity.
Lesson Overview
Public Health and Medications
In 1900, more than 30 percent of deaths in the United States were
caused by infectious disease.
In 2005, less than 5 percent of deaths were caused by infectious
disease.
Two factors that contributed to this change are public health
measures and the development of medications.
Lesson Overview
Fighting Infectious Disease
Public Health Measures
In 1854, Dr. John Snow learned, through interviewing residents and
mapping, that the source of a London cholera outbreak was a water
pump. This is a major event in the history of public health.
The field of public health offers services and advice that help
provide healthy conditions.
Lesson Overview
Fighting Infectious Disease
Public Health Measures
Promoting childhood vaccinations and providing clean drinking water
are two important public health measures that have greatly reduced
the spread of infectious disease.
Lesson Overview
Medications
Medications, such as antibiotics and antiviral drugs, are other
weapons that can fight pathogens.
An antibiotic is a compound that kills bacteria without harming its
host.
In 1928, Alexander Fleming noticed that a mold, Penicillium
notatum, seemed to produce something that inhibited bacterial
growth. Research determined that this “something” was a compound
Fleming named penicillin.
Researchers learned to mass-produce penicillin just in time for it
to save thousands of World War II soldiers.
Lesson Overview
Antibiotics have no effect on viruses.
However, antiviral drugs have been developed to fight certain viral
infections.
These drugs generally inhibit the ability of viruses to invade
cells or to multiply once inside cells.
Lesson Overview
Why have patterns of infectious diseases changed?
Two major reasons for the emergence of new diseases are the
ongoing
merging of human and animal habitats and the increase in the
exotic
animal trade.
Misuse of medications has led to the re-emergence of diseases that
many
people thought were under control.
Lesson Overview
New and Re-Emerging Diseases
By 1980, many people thought that medicine had conquered infectious
disease.
Vaccination and other public health measures had wiped out polio in
the United States and had eliminated smallpox globally.
Antibiotics seemed to have bacterial diseases under control.
Some exotic diseases remained in the tropics, but researchers were
confident that epidemics would soon be history.
Lesson Overview
New and Re-Emerging Diseases
In recent decades, a host of new diseases have appeared, including
AIDS, SARS, hantavirus, monkeypox, West Nile virus, Ebola, and
avian influenza (“bird flu”).
Other diseases that people thought were under control are
re-emerging as a threat and spreading to new areas.
Lesson Overview
Changing Interactions With Animals
Pathogens are also evolving in ways that enable them to infect
different hosts.
As people clear new areas of land and as environments change,
people come in contact with different pathogens.
Lesson Overview
Changing Interactions With Animals
Exotic animal trade, for pets and food, has also given pathogens
new opportunities to jump from animals to humans.
In 2003, dormice from Ghana spread monkeypox to prairie dogs in the
United States, which then infected humans.
The spread of SARS also has been associated with the wild animal
trade.
Lesson Overview
Fighting Infectious Disease
Misuse of Medications
Misuse of medications has led to the re-emergence of diseases that
many people thought were under control.
For example, many strains of the pathogens that cause tuberculosis
and malaria are evolving resistance to a wide variety of
antibiotics and other medications.