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Disease
Disease definitions
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Agent | A factor (microorganism, chemical, or physical) that can cause disease |
| antigen | A substance that induces an immune response |
| attack rate | The proportion of people who become ill in a population at risk during an outbreak |
| case | An individual with a particular disease or health condition |
| case definition | Standard criteria for classifying a person as a case |
| carrier | A person or organism harboring a pathogen without showing symptoms |
| chronic carrier | An individual who harbors and sheds a pathogen for months, years, or life, often without symptoms, serving as a long-term reservoir of infection. |
| cluster | An unusual aggregation of health events (like illnesses) grouped in time, space, or by a specific group, that appears to be more frequent than expected |
| cohort | A group of individuals with a shared characteristic followed over time |
| communicability period | The time interval during which an infected individual can transmit an infectious agent to others. |
| confidence interval | A range of values within which the true parameter likely lies |
| confiding limits | The lower and upper bounds of a confidence interval |
| convalescent | a person recovering from an illness who may still be infectious or shedding the pathogen |
| convalescent carrier | An individual who continues to shed and transmit a pathogen after recovering from the clinical illness, during the recovery phase |
| Critical Control Point (CCP) | A specific step in a process where control must be applied to prevent, eliminate, or reduce a food safety hazard to an acceptable level |
| determinant | The causes, risk factors, and influences (biological, environmental, social, behavioral) that affect the occurrence, distribution, and patterns of diseases and health outcomes in populations |
| dose-response | The relationship between the level of exposure to a risk factor and the likelihood or severity of a health outcome |
| effectiveness | How well an intervention works in real-world, everyday conditions |
| efficacy | How well an intervention (like a vaccine) works under ideal, controlled conditions such as clinical trials |
| endemic | The constant presence of a disease in a population. |
| epidemic | An increase in cases above expected levels in a population |
| pandemic | an epidemic occurring over a wide geographic area affecting a large portion of the population |
| etiology | The study or identification of the cause or origin of a disease |
| false-positive | A test result indicating disease when none is present |
| false-negative | A test result indicating no disease when disease is present |
| fomite | Objects or materials which are likely to carry infection, such as clothes, utensils, and furniture |
| frequency | The number of occurrences of a value or event (the quantitative expression of disease occurrence, calculated as the number of events or cases divided by the size of the population at risk over a specified time period) |
| Holoendemic | Describes a disease that is highly prevalent in a population, affecting most children early in life with adults commonly immune |
| Hyperendemic | Describes a disease consistently present at high levels in all age groups within a population |
| Hypoendemic | Describes a disease present at consistently low levels within a population |
| Iatrogenic | Relating to illness caused by medical examination or treatment |
| incubation period | Interval from exposure to symptom onset |
| Incubatory carrier | A person who can transmit a disease before symptoms appear, during the incubation period |
| infectivity | The ability of a pathogen to invade and multiply in a host population (number of infected individuals ÷ number of exposed individuals) |
| Incidence | The occurrence of new cases of a disease in a defined population over a specified period of time (number of new cases during a time period ÷ population at risk during that period) |
| Index case (patient zero) | the first identified case |
| Isolation | separates individuals who are confirmed to be infected |
| Latent period | The time between exposure to becoming infectious |
| morbidity | Incidence of disease in a population. |
| mortality | The measure of the frequency of death in a population during a specified time period, used to describe and compare the impact of diseases or health conditions across groups |
| notifiable disease | Disease legally required to be reported |
| passive carrier | A person who briefly carries a pathogen on their body or hands without being infected, transmitting it through contaminated surfaces or contact rather than through active infection |
| Active Immunity | long-lasting protection against a pathogen, generated by an individual's own immune system producing antibodies following exposure to an antigen. It is created either naturally via infection or artificially through vaccination |
| passive immunity | the short-term protection against diseases acquired when a person receives antibodies from another human or animal, rather than producing them themselves |
| herd immunity | resistance to the spread of an infectious disease within a population that is based on pre-existing immunity of a high proportion of individuals as a result of previous infection or vaccination |
| pathogenicity | The ability of an infectious agent to cause clinical disease among those infected (number of individuals with clinical disease ÷ number of infected individuals) |
| prevalence | Total cases at a specific time |
| point prevalence | A measure in epidemiology that shows the proportion of a population with a specific disease or condition at a single, precise moment in time (basically the same as prevalence) |
| period prevalence | A measure in epidemiology that shows the proportion of a population with a specific disease or condition over a period of time |
| Primary case | the actual first infected person |
| quarantine | restricts movement of exposed but not yet ill individuals |
| relative risk | Ratio of risk in exposed vs. unexposed |
| reservoir | Habitat where infectious agent lives and multiplies |
| seasonality | Predictable, regular fluctuations in disease occurrence or health outcomes tied to specific times of the year |
| secondary case | an individual who contracts an illness from exposure to a primary case (an already diseased person), rather than from the original, common outbreak source itself |
| syndrome | Group of signs and symptoms that occur together |
| transient | Short-term, temporary colonization or temporary presence of an organism without long-term persistence |
| transmission | Spread of an infectious agent from one host to another |
| Type I error | occurs when an epidemiological study incorrectly concludes that there is an association or outbreak when none actually exists. This means rejecting the null hypothesis and identifying a risk factor or disease link that is not real |
| Type II error | occurs when an epidemiological study fails to detect a real association or outbreak that actually exists. This means accepting the null hypothesis and missing a true risk factor, exposure, or disease relationship |
| vehicle | A vehicle is an inanimate intermediary that carries an infectious agent from a reservoir to a susceptible host |
| virulence | The severity of disease caused by a pathogen among those with clinical illness, essentially the degree of pathogenicity (number of severe cases or deaths ÷ number of individuals with clinical disease) |
| zoonosis | A disease that naturally spreads between animals and humans |
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