Infection
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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An infection is the detrimental colonization of a host organism by a foreign species. In an infection, the infecting organism seeks to utilize the host's resources to multiply (usually at the expense of the host). The infecting organism, or pathogen, interferes with the normal functioning of the host and can lead to chronic wounds, gangrene, loss of an infected limb, and even death. The host's response to infection is inflammation. Colloquially, a pathogen is usually considered a microscopic organism though the definition is broader, including bacteria, parasites, fungi, viruses, prions, and viroids. A symbiosis between parasite and host, whereby the relationship is beneficial for the former but detrimental to the latter, is characterised as parasitism. The branch of medicine that focuses on infections and pathogens is infectious disease.
See also
- Antiseptic
- Autoinfection
- Hand infection
- List of infectious diseases
- Infectious disease
- Multiplicity of infection
- Ubi pus, ibi evacua (Latin: "where there is pus, there evacuate it")
- Routes of infection
- Infection control
- Opportunistic infection
