BIOM20001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 49: Point Mutation, Antigenic Drift, Antibody
Document Summary
Respiratory, faeces, skin (e. g. by scratching vesicular rashes or warts), blood, urine, milk, genital secretions. Fatal: zoonoses/viral diseases where man is not the natural host have very high mortality rates (e. g. ebola) Full recovery: viruses completely cleared by host"s immune system (e. g. influenza) Recovery but permanent damage: virus cleared but left with symptoms (e. g. poliomyelitis, cancer). Can resurface; evolved strategies where they aren"t recognised by the immune system or the immune system can"t recognise them so they stay in the body. Many viruses are acute - get them, immune response clears them, we become immune and they don"t last in the body. Virus induced changes in cells often mirror type of disease. Virus can cause lysis, transformation to tumour cells. Persistent infections can be chronic infections: continuous production of low levels of virus (e. g. hep c virus) - produce a lot of proteins that down-regulate the immune system so they avoid detection, don"t kill the cell.
