Infectivity

Short description: Pathogen's ability to infect hosts

In epidemiology, infectivity is the ability of a pathogen to establish an infection. More specifically, infectivity is the extent to which the pathogen can enter, survive, and multiply in a host. It is measured by the ratio of the number of people who become infected to the total number exposed to the pathogen.^[1]

Infectivity has been shown to positively correlate with virulence, in plants. This means that as a pathogen's ability to infect a greater number of hosts increases, so does the level of harm it brings to the host.^[2]

A pathogen's infectivity is different from its transmissibility, which refers to a pathogen's capacity to pass from one organism to another.^[1]

References

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 Oxford textbook of global public health (6th ed.). Oxford: Oxford university press. 2015. pp. 1486. ISBN 978-0-19-966175-6.
↑ Stewart, AD; Logsdon, JM; Kelley, SE (April 2005). "An empirical study of the evolution of virulence under both horizontal and vertical transmission". Evolution 59 (4): 730–739. doi:10.1554/03-330. PMID 15926685.

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[:0-1] 1.0 ^1.1 Oxford textbook of global public health (6th ed.). Oxford: Oxford university press. 2015. pp. 1486. ISBN 978-0-19-966175-6.

[2] Stewart, AD; Logsdon, JM; Kelley, SE (April 2005). "An empirical study of the evolution of virulence under both horizontal and vertical transmission". Evolution 59 (4): 730–739. doi:10.1554/03-330. PMID 15926685.

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Infectivity

Topic: Medicine

See also

References