Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Diseases

Immunology of Infectious Diseases

Immunology is the study of the immune system and is a very important branch of the medical and biological sciences, that deals with the response of an organism to antigenic challenge and its recognition of what is self and what is not. By understanding how pathogens cause disease helps in the development of new therapeutic approaches. Virulence is the measure of the pathogenicity of an organism. The degree of virulence is related directly to the ability of the organism to cause infection despite host resistance mechanisms, it is affected by numerous variables such as the number of infecting bacteria, route of entry into the body, specific and nonspecific host defence mechanisms and virulence factors of the bacterium.