disease

—diseasedly, adv. —diseasedness, n.

/di zeez"/, n., v., diseased, diseasing.

n.

1. a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, or unfavorable environmental factors; illness; sickness; ailment.

2. any abnormal condition in a plant that interferes with its vital physiological processes, caused by pathogenic microorganisms, parasites, unfavorable environmental, genetic, or nutritional factors, etc.

3. any harmful, depraved, or morbid condition, as of the mind or society: His fascination with executions is a disease.

4. decomposition of a material under special circumstances: tin disease.

v.t.

5. to affect with disease; make ill.

[1300-50; ME disese < AF dese(a)se, disaise; see DIS-¹, EASE]

Syn. 1. morbidity, complaint, derangement, distemper, indisposition, infirmity, disorder, malady.

Ant. 1. health. 5. cure.

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(as used in expressions)

brown lung disease

Hansen disease

degenerative joint disease

Addison disease

Alzheimer disease

Lou Gehrig disease

autoimmune disease

Bright disease

celiac disease

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

congenital heart disease

coronary heart disease

ischemic heart disease

Creutzfeldt Jakob disease

caisson disease

Dutch elm disease

hemolytic disease of the newborn

foot and mouth disease

hoof and mouth disease

gastroesophageal reflux disease

glycogen storage disease

Graves disease

heart disease

Hodgkin disease

Korsakoff disease

Legionnaire disease

lipid storage disease

Lyme disease

mad cow disease

Minamata disease

occupational disease

Paget disease of bone

pelvic inflammatory disease

pulmonary heart disease

hyaline membrane disease

sexually transmitted disease

Tay Sachs disease

Wilson disease

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Introduction

 a harmful deviation from the normal structural or functional state of an organism. A diseased organism commonly exhibits signs or symptoms indicative of its abnormal state. Thus, the normal condition of an organism must be understood in order to recognize the hallmarks of disease. Nevertheless, a sharp demarcation between disease and health is not always apparent.

      The study of disease is called pathology. It involves the determination of the cause (etiology) of the disease, the understanding of the mechanisms of its development (pathogenesis), the structural changes associated with the disease process (morphological changes), and the functional consequences of these changes. Correctly identifying the cause of a disease is necessary to identifying the proper course of treatment.

      Humans, animals, and plants are all susceptible to diseases of some sort. However, that which disrupts the normal functioning of one type of organism may have no effect on the other types.

Major distinctions

      The normal state of an organism represents a condition of delicate physiological balance, or homeostasis, in terms of chemical, physical, and functional processes, maintained by a complex of mechanisms that are not fully understood. In a fundamental sense, therefore, disease represents the consequences of a breakdown of the homeostatic control mechanisms. In some instances the affected mechanisms are clearly indicated, but in most cases a complex of mechanisms is disturbed, initially or sequentially, and precise definition of the pathogenesis of the ensuing disease is elusive. Death in human beings and other mammals, for example, often results directly from heart or lung failure, but the preceding sequence of events may be highly complex, involving disturbances of other organ systems and derangement of other control mechanisms.

      The initial cause of the diseased state may lie within the individual organism itself, and the disease is then said to be idiopathic, innate, primary, or “essential.” It may result from a course of medical treatment, either as an unavoidable side effect or because the treatment itself was ill-advised; in either case the disease is classed as iatrogenic. Finally, the disease may be caused by some agent external to the organism, such as a chemical that is a toxic agent. In this case the disease is noncommunicable; that is, it affects only the individual organism exposed to it. The external agent may be itself a living organism capable of multiplying within the host and subsequently infecting other organisms; in this case the disease is said to be communicable.

Noncommunicable disease

Metabolic defects (metabolic disease)

      Noncommunicable diseases arise from genetically determined metabolic abnormalities present at birth that leave the organism ill-equipped to deal with the natural materials it encounters in its daily life. In human beings, for example, the lack of a certain enzyme necessary for the metabolism of the common amino acid phenylalanine leads to the disease phenylketonuria (or PKU), which appears at a few weeks of age and, if not treated, is often associated with mental retardation. Other metabolic defects may make their appearance only relatively late in life. Examples of this situation are the diseases gout and late-onset, or adult-type, diabetes (diabetes mellitus). Gout results from an accumulation within the tissues of uric acid, an end product of nucleic acid metabolism. Late-onset diabetes results from an impaired release of insulin by the pancreas and a reduction in responsiveness of body tissues to insulin that lead to the inability to metabolize sugars and fats properly. Alternatively, the metabolic fault may be associated with aging and the concomitant deterioration of control mechanisms, as in the loss of calcium from bone in the condition known as osteoporosis. That these late-developing metabolic diseases also have a genetic basis—that is, that there is an inherited tendency for the development of the metabolic faults involved—seems to be definitely the case in some instances but remains either incompletely understood or uncertain in others.

Environmental (environment) hazards

      Metabolic derangements also may result from the effects of external environmental factors, a relationship that would be suggested by the apparent confinement of a disease to sharply delimited geographic areas. Notable examples are goitre and mottled enamel of the teeth in humans. The development of goitre is attributable to iodine deficiency in the diet, which leads to compensatory growth of the thyroid gland in a vain effort to overcome the deficiency. The disease tends to occur in inland areas where seafood consumption is minimal and dietary supplementation of iodine—through such items as table salt—does not occur. Mottled enamel of teeth results from consumption of excessive amounts of fluoride, usually in water supplies, but conversely, dental caries (tooth decay) is found to occur to a greater extent in areas in which water supplies are deficient in fluoride. Analogous conditions in herbivorous domesticated (domestication) animals result from deficiencies in trace elements (trace element), such as zinc and selenium, in the soil of pastures and, therefore, also in plants (plant disease) making up the diet. Similarly, plant growth suffers from soil deficiencies of essential elements, particularly nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. These conditions can be corrected by adding salts to the diets of domesticated animals (animal disease) and by applying fertilizers to soil.

      There also are diseases resulting from toxic substances added to the environment in sufficient amounts to produce symptoms of greater or lesser severity. Although human disorders of this nature are best known, untoward effects of such contamination of the environment occur also in plants and animals. The problems caused by environmental toxic agents are largely, if not entirely, anthropogenic. Best known of the environmental diseases, perhaps, are the occupational diseases (occupational disease), especially those of the respiratory (respiratory disease) tract, including asbestosis, silicosis, and byssinosis (caused by inhalation of, respectively, asbestos, silica, and cotton dust). Also important in this regard are metal poisoning, as with mercury, lead, and arsenic; poisoning with solvents used in industrial processes; and exposure to ionizing radiation. Of greater importance to the population at large are the diseases that result from exposure to insecticides and atmospheric pollutants (pollution). Such diseases usually, though not invariably, are of a chronic nature; they require prolonged exposure to the noxious agent and develop slowly. Environmental diseases of all kinds, however, also may predispose the individual to other diseases; for example, respiratory diseases such as silicosis render the sufferer more susceptible to tuberculosis.

Communicable disease (infectious disease)

Host-parasite relationships

      Communicable, or contagious, diseases are those transmitted from one organism to another; infectious diseases are diseases caused in the host by infection with living, and therefore replicating, microorganisms such as animal parasites, bacteria, fungi (fungus), or viruses (virus). Practically, these two classes of disease are the same, because infectious diseases generally are communicable, or transmissible, from one host (parasitism) to another, and the causative agent, therefore, is disseminated, directly or indirectly, through the host population. Such spread is an ecological (ecosystem) phenomenon, the host serving as the environment in which the parasite lives; complexity arises when the parasite occurs in more than one host species. The host-parasite relationship, therefore, must be considered not only with respect to the individual host-parasite interaction but also in terms of the interrelationship between the host and parasite populations, as well as those of any other host species involved.

      Most pathogenic bacteria are obligate parasites; that is, they are found only in association with their hosts. Some, such as staphylococci (staphylococcus) and streptococci (Streptococcus), can proliferate outside the body of the host in nutritive materials infected from host sources. Within the tissues of the host, these organisms set up local infections that spread throughout the body. Still other bacteria, such as the glanders bacillus and the gonococci, meningococci (meningococcus), and pneumococci (pneumococcus), are more closely adapted parasites, capable of multiplying outside the body of the host only under the artificial conditions of the laboratory. All these microorganisms have complete cell structures and metabolic capabilities.

      A greater degree of dependence on the host is shown by rickettsiae (rickettsia) and viruses. Rickettsiae are microorganisms that have the cell structure of bacteria; they exhibit a small degree of metabolic activity outside cells, but they cannot grow in the absence of host tissue. The ultimate in parasitism, however, is that of the viruses, which have no conventional cell structure and consist only of a nucleic acid (either DNA or RNA) wrapped in a protective protein coat. Viruses are obligatory intracellular parasites, capable of multiplying only within the cells of the host, and they have no independent metabolic activity of their own. The genetic information that directs the synthesis of virus materials and certain enzymes enters the host cell, parasitizes its chemical processes, and directs them toward the synthesis of new virus elements.

      These various degrees of parasitism suggest that the host-parasite relationship is subject to continuing evolutionary change. The adaptation of the microorganism to its parasitic existence, in this view, is accompanied by progressive loss in metabolic capability, with eventual complete physiological dependence of the parasite on the host.

Parasite specificity

      The condition of obligate parasitism is associated with a degree of specificity of the parasite with regard to the host; i.e., the parasite generally is more closely adapted (adaptation) to one species of host than to all others. Microorganisms adapted to plant hosts, with only rare exception, are unable to infect animal hosts, and conversely microorganism parasites of animals rarely occur in plants. A number of host species may be susceptible to infection with a given parasite, and the pattern of host susceptibility need not correspond with taxonomic relationships, including hosts varying as widely as vertebrates and invertebrates.

      The ability to produce consistently fatal disease in a host is often of negative survival value to the parasite, because it is quite likely to eliminate quickly all available hosts. Consistent with this, there is a tendency for disease resulting from infection to be less severe when adaptation of the parasite to the host has become close. A change in severity of a disease, presumably resulting from adaptation, has been observed in the case of the spirochete that causes syphilis, with the disease in human beings being less severe today than it was in the 16th century. However, ecological studies of parasitism indicate that it is incorrect to assume that all host-parasite relationships will evolve toward reduced antagonism and that a resultant disease state eventually will be ameliorated. (For further information see community ecology.)

      Disease produced in related host species may be either milder or more severe than in the definitive host. In certain cases, adaptation is so close that the parasite is unable to infect any other hosts under natural conditions; this is true of many microorganisms producing disease in humans. On the other hand, natural infection of secondary hosts may occur, leading to severe or fatal disease. rabies, for example, is a fatal disease in almost all animal hosts. In some species such as the bat, however, the virus may persist for long periods as an asymptomatic infection.

Host resistance

      The specificity of pathogenic microorganisms with regard to their hosts is an expression not only of differences in microbial character but also of differing host resistance. The ability of a microorganism to produce disease can be evaluated only in terms of the host reaction, and conversely the resistance, or immunity, of the host can be judged only with regard to its effect on the microorganism. In short, the two are but different facets of the same phenomenon, and either may be evaluated by holding the other constant and varying it. Commonly, for example, virulence of an infective agent is determined experimentally by inoculating groups of hosts with graded doses of the agent and determining, by interpolation, the dose that produces a typical reaction in 50 percent of the host individuals inoculated. This dose is termed the 50-percent-effective dose, or ED₅₀; it is related in inverse fashion to virulence and in a direct way to resistance. In other words, in a given host, the higher the 50-percent-effective dose, the less virulent the infective organism; or, with a microorganism of known virulence, the higher the ED₅₀ with the host it is tested against, the greater the resistance of that particular host. Customarily, in different host species, resistance is expressed as an n-fold increase or decrease (with n equal to a whole number) in the ED₅₀ over that of the normal host species.

      This kind of assay is possible because both virulence and resistance tend to occur in approximately normal, or bell-shaped, frequency distributions; that is, most members of the host and microorganism populations occupy a central position with regard to these properties, exceptional individuals appearing at both extremes. With reference to host resistance, this explains the varied incidence of disease in a host population exposed to a statistically constant dose of the infectious agent. In most practical considerations the dose is only statistically constant, for it varies greatly from one host to another depending on circumstances relating to transfer of the infectious agent. Individual variation in host resistance to infection, however, is due to more than mere numbers of infectious agents encountered; it also results from innate factors in the individual host organism. At any rate, variation in host resistance means that not all individuals making up a population essentially universally susceptible to infection with newly appearing infectious agents will contract the disease on first exposure.

Apparent and inapparent infection

      Because infection is not an all-or-nothing affair, individual variation in resistance to disease also results in different degrees of reaction to the infectious agent; i.e., the outcome of the interaction of host and parasite is variable in each individual instance. Some individual hosts show symptoms typical of the disease, and infection is readily recognized. Others, having greater resistance, exhibit symptoms of the disease in only a mild or atypical form, and infection in these individuals may not be clearly recognizable. Still other host organisms become infected with the invading parasite but show no symptoms of the disease. Distinction, therefore, must be made between infection and disease, the former occurring on occasion without any sign of the latter. There may be, of course, no such thing as totally asymptomatic infections. What are taken to be such may be, in fact, only those infections with symptoms occurring beneath the level of observation. Nonetheless, such inapparent infections, or “carrier” states, clearly exist and serve to transmit the infection to susceptible hosts.

      The overt consequence of infection of a host population of relatively high resistance is the sporadic occurrence of cases of disease and a high carrier-case ratio. The infection, in other words, is widely prevalent in the host population in asymptomatic form, and the relatively rare observed cases of disease represent the highly susceptible few in the host population making up one extreme of the bell-shaped frequency distribution curve. Examples of human diseases of this kind are poliomyelitis (polio), meningococcal meningitis, and cholera.

      This type of irregularity in the occurrence of cases of disease tends to occur in host populations of high, but not too high, resistance to the infectious agent. If host resistance is too high, or too low, the disease will die out: in the former case, because the infective agent is unable to maintain itself and, in the latter, because it eliminates the host. One of the best-known illustrations of the importance of relative host resistance to survival of the parasite is that of the plague bacillus. Plague is primarily a disease of rodents (rodent) and persists as focuses of infection in these hosts. The black rat and the less susceptible gray sewer rat are commonly associated with this disease but are too susceptible to allow its persistence; i.e., the host is destroyed. The infection persists, however, in relatively resistant wild rodents.

Inheritance (heredity) of resistance

      That there exists genetic control of resistance is suggested by the mere fact of host specificity, and such control has been demonstrated amply by experimental studies on both plant and animal hosts. The former, for example, had wide practical application in the development, by selective breeding, of strains and races of plants of economic importance, especially grains, that are resistant to a wide variety of plant diseases.

      In general, resistance developed by selective breeding is only partially specific; that is, the observed resistance to infection with pathogenic microorganisms, and to the toxins of such organisms, is manifested toward groups of related microorganisms producing similar diseases, not to single organisms alone. Although resistance to disease has been found in a few instances to be a function of a single gene, in most cases several genes are involved.

      For many years there has been considerable interest in the possibility of differences in resistance to disease associated with the different human populations. While marked differences in morbidity and mortality occur between whites and nonwhites in the United States, for example, it is often difficult to rule out differences in exposure to infection, socioeconomic factors, and differential application of preventive and therapeutic measures in accounting for them. Nevertheless, there are fragmentary indications that there may be sufficient genetic segregation among races (race) to result in differences in resistance to certain diseases. The case fatality rate in tuberculosis appears to be lower in Jews than in others, for example, and gonorrhea seems to be a less serious disease in blacks than in whites.

epidemiology

      The interaction of host and parasite populations constitutes the subject matter of epidemiology (the term being more inclusive than suggested by its relation to the word epidemic). In most instances the epidemiology of infectious disease is characteristic of that disease and is an outgrowth of biological properties of the parasite and the host, including host specificity and the behaviour of the host species as populations.

      Aside from the saprophytic microorganisms that occasionally produce disease, most pathogenic microorganisms are adapted sufficiently closely to their hosts that they cannot compete successfully in the physical, chemical, and biological environment outside the host tissues. Exceptions to this generalization occur in the cases of those microorganisms whose life history includes a resistant spore stage. This occurs with various fungi (fungus) responsible for plant disease, as well as certain parasites of animals. Among the latter are species of the fungus Coccidioides, which infect both rodents and humans (producing desert fever in the latter), and the anthrax bacillus, which causes disease in cattle, sheep, and other domesticated animals and occasionally infects humans as well. A disease of animals that can be transmitted to humans is called a zoonosis.

      Survival of the parasite ordinarily requires that it be transmitted more or less directly from an infected host organism to a susceptible one. The precise route of infection often is of primary importance, with some microorganisms requiring direct access to internal tissue, some being able to initiate infection on mucous membranes of the nose and throat, and others able to establish primary infections in the intestinal tract. These particular modes of infection generally occur by way of, respectively, biting insects, coughing and sneezing, and contamination of food and water.

      The occurrence of a given parasite in more than one host species may markedly affect its epidemiological character; it may persist, for example, in one or another of its hosts as a reservoir of infection, sallying forth to encounter the alternate host only on occasion. It is fairly common to find transmission of a parasite from one vertebrate or plant host to another occurring by means of an insect carrier, or vector. Often animal parasites have intermediate hosts in which one or more phases of their life cycles occur; this results in an obligatory sequence of hosts in the life history of the parasite. With the disease schistosomiasis in humans, for example, the blood flukes responsible for the disease (Schistosoma species) spend one phase of their larval life in snails. Under such circumstances, and they are not uncommon, the dissemination of the parasite in a host population is dependent not only on the interaction of the parasite population with that of the host population but also on the interaction of the intermediate or vector host population with both parasite and host populations.

      Such interrelationships may be the basis of geographic and seasonal (season) differences in the incidence of disease. An insect-borne disease transmitted from one host species to another requires the simultaneous presence of all three populations in sufficient numbers for its dissemination. Such a circumstance may be sharply limited by location and season.

      Behavioral patterns of host populations often have a great effect on the transmission of infectious agents. Crowding, for example, facilitates the spread of infection. Bovine tuberculosis is largely a disease of domesticated cattle in barns, and the age incidence of the human diseases of childhood is lower in urban than in rural populations, suggesting that in the more crowded urban environment children are exposed to disease at an earlier age.

      When a disease is prevalent in an area over long periods of time, it is considered to be endemic in that area. When the prevalence of disease is subject to wide fluctuations in time, it is considered to be epidemic during periods of high prevalence. Epidemics prevailing over wide geographic areas are called pandemics.

      Epidemic prevalence of disease occurs in a wave, the number of cases rising to a peak and then declining. The period of increase occurs when each case gives rise to more than one additional case—i.e., when the parasite population is growing more rapidly than the host population. The decline occurs when each case gives rise to less than one new case—i.e., when the parasite population begins to die off because it encounters only immune individuals among the host population. The rise and fall in epidemic prevalence of a disease is a probability (probability and statistics) phenomenon, the probability being that of transfer of an effective dose of the infectious agent from the infected individual to a susceptible one. After an epidemic wave has subsided, the affected host population contains such a small proportion of susceptible individuals that reintroduction of the infection will not result in a new epidemic. Because the parasite population cannot reproduce itself in such a host population, the entire host population is immune to the epidemic disease, a phenomenon termed “herd” immunity.

      Following such an epidemic, however, the host population immediately tends to revert to a condition of susceptibility because of (1) the deterioration of individual immunity, (2) the removal of immune individuals by death, and (3) the influx of susceptible individuals by birth. In time the population as a whole again reaches the point at which it is susceptible to epidemic disease. This pattern of rising and falling herd immunity explains why epidemic diseases tend to occur in waves—i.e., exhibit a periodicity in prevalence. The time elapsing between successive epidemic peaks is variable and differs from one disease to another.

Immunity

      Humans and all other vertebrates react to the presence of parasites within their tissues by means of immune mechanisms of which there are two types: nonspecific, innate immunity and specific, acquired immunity. Innate immunity, with which an organism is born, involves protective factors, such as interferon, and cells, such as macrophages, granulocytes, and natural killer cells, and its action does not depend on prior exposure to a pathogen. Specific immunity is acquired during the organism's lifetime and involves the activation of white blood cells (B cell) (B and T lymphocytes), which distinguish and react to foreign substances. B lymphocytes operate by producing antibodies, proteins that neutralize foreign molecules (antigens), while T lymphocytes directly attack invaders. Many immune responses, however, involve both mechanisms.

      Although the immune response is primarily defensive in nature, it may contribute in some cases to the pathogenesis of the disease. In rheumatic fever, for example, sensitivity to antigens of the causative streptococcus organism, which cross-react with host tissue antigens, is associated with the progress and adverse aspects of the disease. The immune response to various environmental substances, such as plant pollens and chemotherapeutic drugs, also is responsible for the diseases grouped under the general head of allergies. The immune response itself may become deficient in human diseases involving white cells, such as multiple myeloma, macroglobulinemia, Hodgkin's disease, and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Such diminished immune responses, however, seem to be of minor significance to the course of these diseases, although, when the disease is sufficiently severe and prolonged, it can increase the risk of opportunistic infections, which can be fatal.

      One category of disease is associated with an immune response to antigenic components of the host itself (autoantigens). These diseases, called autoimmune diseases, include rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus. (For a more detailed explanation of the immunologic system, see immune system.)

Control of disease

Prevention (preventive medicine)

      Most diseases are preventable to a greater or lesser degree, the chief exceptions being the idiopathic diseases, such as the inherited metabolic defects. In the case of those diseases resulting from environmental factors, prevention is a matter of eliminating, or sharply reducing, the responsible material in the environment. Because these materials originate largely from human activities, prevention ought to be a simple matter of the application of well-established principles of industrial hygiene. In practice, however, this is often difficult to achieve.

      The infectious diseases may be prevented in one of two general ways: (1) by preventing contact, and therefore transmission of infection, between the susceptible host and the source of infection and (2) by rendering the host unsusceptible, either by selective breeding or by induction of an effective artificial immunity. The nature of the specific preventive measures, and their efficacy, varies from one disease to another.

       quarantine, which is an effective method of preventing transmission of disease in principle, has had only limited success in actual practice. In only a few instances has quarantine achieved prevention of the spread of disease across international borders, and quarantine of individual cases of human disease has long been abandoned as ineffective.

      It has not been possible to prevent effectively the dissemination of airborne disease, notably airborne fungal (fungus) diseases of plants (plant disease) and human diseases of the upper respiratory tract. Nor is disease ordinarily controllable by elimination of reservoirs of infection, such as those that occur in wild animals (animal disease). There are certain exceptions in which the reservoir of infection can be greatly reduced, however; for example, chemotherapy of human tuberculosis may render individual cases noninfectious, and slaughtering of infected cattle may reduce the incidence of bovine tuberculosis.

      When infection is spread less directly, through the agency of living vectors or inanimate vehicles, it is often possible to break one or more of the links connecting the susceptible host with the source (parasitism) of infection. Malaria can be controlled effectively by the elimination of the mosquito vector, and louse-borne typhus in humans can be regulated by disinfestation methods. Similarly, diseases spread in epidemic form through the agency of water or milk are controlled by measures such as the chlorination of public water supplies and the pasteurization of milk.

      Artificial immunization against certain diseases provides immunity and may be used in these instances, particularly when other methods of control are impractical or ineffective. The mass immunization of children in their early years has been highly effective in the control of diphtheria, smallpox, poliomyelitis, and measles. In addition, hepatitis B immunization of children worldwide has helped control the spread of this highly infectious virus, and the immunization of girls against human papillomavirus is expected to reduce the future incidence of cervical cancer. Under special circumstances, as in certain military populations, it has been possible to control with prophylactic medicinal agents the spread of disease for which effective vaccines have not been developed.

Treatment (therapeutics)

      Treatment of disease in the affected individual is twofold in nature, being directed (1) toward restoration of a normal physiological state and (2) toward removal of the causative agent. The diseased organism itself plays an active part in both respects, having the capacity for tissue proliferation to replace damaged tissue and to surround and wall off the noxious agent, as well as defense and detoxification mechanisms that remove the causative agent and its products or render them harmless. Therapy of disease supplements and reinforces these natural defense mechanisms.

      Metabolic faults also may sometimes be corrected—for example, by the use of insulin in the treatment and control of diabetes—but more often specific therapeutic measures for idiopathic diseases are lacking. However, advances in gene therapy (genetics) may be able to correct defective genes that result in disease.

      When disease is produced by environmental factors, there is commonly no specific treatment; only removal of the affected individual from exposure to the agent generally allows normal detoxification responses to take over. Again, there are notable exceptions, as in the treatment of lead poisoning with ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, an agent that forms complexes with lead that are excreted by the kidney.

      Treatment of infectious diseases is more effective in general; it assumes several different forms. Treatment of diphtheria with antitoxin, for example, neutralizes the toxin formed by the microorganisms, and host defense mechanisms then rid the body of the causative microorganisms. In other diseases, treatment is symptomatic in the sense of restoring normal body function. An outstanding example of this is in cholera, in which disease symptoms result from a massive loss of fluid and salts and from a metabolic acidosis; the highly effective treatment consists of restoring water and salts, the latter including bicarbonates or lactates to combat acidosis. More often, however, therapy is directed against the infecting microorganism by administration of drugs such as sulfonamides (sulfonamide) or antibiotics (antibiotic). While some of these substances kill the microorganisms (bacteria), others do not and instead inhibit proliferation of the microorganism and give host defenses an opportunity to function effectively. For other infectious diseases there is no specific therapy. There are, for example, very few antiviral chemotherapeutic agents; treatment of viral (virus) diseases is mainly directed toward relief of discomfort and pain, and recovery, if it ensues, is largely a matter of an effective cellular immune response mounted against the invading virus by the host.

William Burrows Dante G. Scarpelli

Additional Reading

Lawrie Reznek, The Nature of Disease (1987), written for the general reader, discusses the nature of disease from several perspectives, including medical, legal, political, philosophical, and economic. David O. Slauson, Barry J. Cooper, and Maja M. Suter, Mechanisms of Disease: A Textbook of Comparative General Pathology, 2nd ed. (1990), written for the veterinary student but a great resource for pathologists and biomedical researchers, provides a fundamental overview of the mechanisms of diseases, often at the molecular level. Max Samter (ed.), Immunological Diseases, 4th ed., 2 vol. (1988), covers the collagen diseases. F.M. Burnet, The Natural History of Infectious Disease, 3rd ed. (1962), offers a unique view of infectious disease as an ecological and evolutionary phenomenon. Books for the general reader include June Goodfield, Quest for the Killers (1985), exploring efforts to conquer several epidemic diseases; Andrew Scott, Pirates of the Cell: The Story of Viruses from Molecule to Microbe, rev. ed. (1987); and Peter Radetsky, The Invisible Invaders: The Story of the Emerging Age of Viruses (1991).William Burrows Dante G. Scarpelli

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