reply or any comme An example of a bacterial or viral pathogen that is becoming
ID: 214418 • Letter: R
Question
reply or any comme
An example of a bacterial or viral pathogen that is becoming more or less virulent is Pneumonia. In most cases, pneumonia is a pathogen that generally more virulent in a new habitat. This means, it hosts in new environments where it did not have a chance to become resistant to the pathogen through natural selection. As professor Foote mentioned that “natural selection” enables selection to occur by providing choices. In this example, Pneumonia is an organism with characteristics that enhance survival are more likely to survive and reproduces than variants that lack desirable traits chosen by the environment. A lot of it has to do with poor ventilation of lungs, caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae.
On the other hand, it may be the process whereby a normally susceptible host is infected with a less virulent pathogen, usually a virus, thereby it becomes resistant to infection by a second, mostly related with more virulent pathogen. These are types of infectious immunization vaccines; they are modified living- bacterial or viral which are passaged until they become less virulent.
To make it clear, we can refer this as differences between primary pathogens and opportunistic pathogens. For example, primary pathogens are microbes that easily cause disease in healthy hosts, whereas opportunistic pathogens generally only cause disease when a secondary contributing factor such as a host with a compromised immune system or displacement of the microbe to an unusual site within the host occurs. Some common primary pathogens are Bordetella pertussis, which causes whooping cough, and Helicobacter pylori, which causes gastritis and ulcers. The list of opportunistic pathogens can go on and on, as the number of immunocompromised persons in society has increased. A common opportunistic pathogen is Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which often is pathogenic for burn victims or people with cystic fibrosis.
Explanation / Answer
In the first paragraph, I understand that you are explaining how a host which has not been previously exposed to the pathogen before can develop the disease and will perish. Similarly at the same time, some of the hosts in the same population will develop some kind of resistance (adaptive immunity) and hence will survive. In the second paragraph, it is talking about the host getting resistance towards the actual disease causing potential virulent pathogen just by getting exposed to a less virulent and potentially less threatning agent (Principle of immunization). Lastly, there is explanation about differences between primary and opportunistic pathogens which infect and spread in different manner with different host targets.
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