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A disease is a particular abnormal condition that adversely affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism and is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that are associated with specific signs and symptoms. A disease may be caused by external factors such as pathogens or by internal dysfunctions. For example, internal dysfunctions of the immune system can produce a variety of different diseases, including various forms of immunodeficiency, hypersensitivity, allergies, and autoimmune disorders.
Streptococcus is a genus of gram-positive coccus or spherical bacteria that belongs to the family Streptococcaceae, within the order Lactobacillales, in the phylum Bacillota. Cell division in streptococci occurs along a single axis, thus when growing they tend to form pairs or chains, which may appear bent or twisted. This differs from staphylococci, which divide along multiple axes, thereby generating irregular, grape-like clusters of cells. Most streptococci are oxidase-negative and catalase-negative, and many are facultative anaerobes.
Pathology is the study of disease and injury. The word pathology also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in the context of modern medical treatment, the term is often used in a narrower fashion to refer to processes and tests that fall within the contemporary medical field of "general pathology", an area that includes a number of distinct but inter-related medical specialties that diagnose disease, mostly through analysis of tissue and human cell samples. Idiomatically, "a pathology" may also refer to the predicted or actual progression of particular diseases, and the affix pathy is sometimes used to indicate a state of disease in cases of both physical ailment and psychological conditions. A physician practicing pathology is called a pathologist.
Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution, patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population.
Frederick Griffith (1877–1941) was a British bacteriologist whose focus was the epidemiology and pathology of bacterial pneumonia. In January 1928 he reported what is now known as Griffith's Experiment, the first widely accepted demonstrations of bacterial transformation, whereby a bacterium distinctly changes its form and function.
The science of epidemiology has matured significantly from the times of Hippocrates, Semmelweis and John Snow. The techniques for gathering and analyzing epidemiological data vary depending on the type of disease being monitored but each study will have overarching similarities.
Streptococcus pneumoniae, or pneumococcus, is a Gram-positive, spherical bacteria, alpha-hemolytic member of the genus Streptococcus. They are usually found in pairs (diplococci) and do not form spores and are non motile. As a significant human pathogenic bacterium S. pneumoniae was recognized as a major cause of pneumonia in the late 19th century, and is the subject of many humoral immunity studies.
Bacterial pneumonia is a type of pneumonia caused by bacterial infection.
An environmental factor, ecological factor or eco factor is any factor, abiotic or biotic, that influences living organisms. Abiotic factors include ambient temperature, amount of sunlight, air, soil, water and pH of the water soil in which an organism lives. Biotic factors would include the availability of food organisms and the presence of biological specificity, competitors, predators, and parasites.
An opportunistic infection is an infection caused by pathogens that take advantage of an opportunity not normally available. These opportunities can stem from a variety of sources, such as a weakened immune system, an altered microbiome, or breached integumentary barriers. Many of these pathogens do not necessarily cause disease in a healthy host that has a non-compromised immune system, and can, in some cases, act as commensals until the balance of the immune system is disrupted. Opportunistic infections can also be attributed to pathogens which cause mild illness in healthy individuals but lead to more serious illness when given the opportunity to take advantage of an immunocompromised host.
Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) refers to pneumonia contracted by a person outside of the healthcare system. In contrast, hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) is seen in patients who have recently visited a hospital or who live in long-term care facilities. CAP is common, affecting people of all ages, and its symptoms occur as a result of oxygen-absorbing areas of the lung (alveoli) filling with fluid. This inhibits lung function, causing dyspnea, fever, chest pains and cough.
Molecular pathology is an emerging discipline within pathology which is focused in the study and diagnosis of disease through the examination of molecules within organs, tissues or bodily fluids. Molecular pathology shares some aspects of practice with both anatomic pathology and clinical pathology, molecular biology, biochemistry, proteomics and genetics, and is sometimes considered a "crossover" discipline. It is multi-disciplinary in nature and focuses mainly on the sub-microscopic aspects of disease. A key consideration is that more accurate diagnosis is possible when the diagnosis is based on both the morphologic changes in tissues and on molecular testing.
Molecular epidemiology is a branch of epidemiology and medical science that focuses on the contribution of potential genetic and environmental risk factors, identified at the molecular level, to the etiology, distribution and prevention of disease within families and across populations. This field has emerged from the integration of molecular biology into traditional epidemiological research. Molecular epidemiology improves our understanding of the pathogenesis of disease by identifying specific pathways, molecules and genes that influence the risk of developing disease. More broadly, it seeks to establish understanding of how the interactions between genetic traits and environmental exposures result in disease.
While epidemiology is "the study of the distribution and determinants of states of health in populations", social epidemiology is "that branch of epidemiology concerned with the way that social structures, institutions, and relationships influence health." This research includes "both specific features of, and pathways by which, societal conditions affect health".
The Bradford Hill criteria, otherwise known as Hill's criteria for causation, are a group of nine principles that can be useful in establishing epidemiologic evidence of a causal relationship between a presumed cause and an observed effect and have been widely used in public health research. They were established in 1965 by the English epidemiologist Sir Austin Bradford Hill.
Pneumonia can be classified in several ways, most commonly by where it was acquired, but may also by the area of lung affected or by the causative organism. There is also a combined clinical classification, which combines factors such as age, risk factors for certain microorganisms, the presence of underlying lung disease or systemic disease and whether the person has recently been hospitalized.
Cause, also known as etiology and aetiology, is the reason or origination of something.
Causal inference is the process of determining the independent, actual effect of a particular phenomenon that is a component of a larger system. The main difference between causal inference and inference of association is that causal inference analyzes the response of an effect variable when a cause of the effect variable is changed. The study of why things occur is called etiology, and can be described using the language of scientific causal notation. Causal inference is said to provide the evidence of causality theorized by causal reasoning.
Molecular pathological epidemiology is a discipline combining epidemiology and pathology. It is defined as "epidemiology of molecular pathology and heterogeneity of disease". Pathology and epidemiology share the same goal of elucidating etiology of disease, and MPE aims to achieve this goal at molecular, individual and population levels. Typically, MPE utilizes tissue pathology resources and data within existing epidemiology studies. Molecular epidemiology broadly encompasses MPE and conventional-type molecular epidemiology with the use of traditional disease designation systems.
Shuji Ogino is a molecular pathological epidemiologist, pathologist, and epidemiologist. He is currently Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also Chief of Program in MPE Molecular Pathological Epidemiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and an associate member of Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He has been known for his work on establishing a new discipline, molecular pathological epidemiology, which represents an interdisciplinary science of molecular pathology and epidemiology.
References
- ↑ Gellman, Marc D.; Turner, J. Rick, eds. (2013). Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. New York: Springer. p. 716. ISBN 978-1-4419-1380-7.
- ↑ Fox A (2010). General aspects of bacterial pathogenesis. University of South Carolina School of Medicine: Microbiology and Immunology On-line Textbook.
- ↑ Porta M, Greenland S, Hernán M, dos Santos Silva I, Last JM, eds. (2014). A dictionary of epidemiology (6th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199976737.
- ↑ "Meningitis Caused by Streptococcus Pneumoniae, Causes, Symptoms and Treatment: A Review - PEXACY". 2022-08-21. Retrieved 2022-10-03.
- ↑ Last, JM, ed. (2000). A Dictionary of Epidemiology (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-19-977434-0.
- ↑ Ogino S, Stampfer M (2010). "Lifestyle factors and microsatellite instability in colorectal cancer: the evolving field of molecular pathological epidemiology". J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 102 (6): 365–7. doi:10.1093/jnci/djq031. PMC 2841039 . PMID 20208016.
- ↑ Ogino S, Chan AT, Fuchs CS, Giovannucci E (2011). "Molecular pathological epidemiology of colorectal neoplasia: an emerging transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary field". Gut. 60 (3): 397–411. doi:10.1136/gut.2010.217182. PMC 3040598 . PMID 21036793.
- ↑ Sharma, Dr Anubhav (2022-10-03). "What is Pathogenesis? The Development of a Disease?". Witfire. Retrieved 2022-10-03.
