What You Need To Know About Infectious Disease
Prevention & Treatment
Vaccines & Medicines
Medicines have existed in human society probably as long as sickness itself. However, with the advent of the modern pharmaceutical industry, biochemical approaches to preventing and treating disease have acquired a new level of prominence in the evolving relationship between microbes and their human hosts.
Explore Other Topics
What do you know about infectious disease?
True or False: Antibiotics work by introducing an agent that resembles a disease-causing microbe, thus stimulating the body's immune system to recognize it as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that it can more easily identify and destroy any similar, disease-causing microbes that it later encounters.
-
Sorry, that’s incorrect.
The above describes how vaccines work. Antibiotics work by either killing bacteria or stopping them from reproducing, allowing the body's natural defenses to eliminate the pathogens.
-
Correct!
The above describes how vaccines work. Antibiotics work by either killing bacteria or stopping them from reproducing, allowing the body's natural defenses to eliminate the pathogens.
Infectious Disease Defined
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
A federal agency under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that works with partners across the United States to ensure public health—through health promotion; prevention of disease, injury, and disability; and preparedness for new health threats.
National Academies
Search the National Academies Press website by selecting one of these related terms.
Source Material
- Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality (2011)
- The Domestic and International Impacts of the 2009-H1N1 Influenza A Pandemic: Global Challenges, Global Solutions—Workshop Summary (2010)
- The Impact of Globalization on Infectious Disease Emergence and Control: Exploring the Consequences and Opportunities—Workshop Summary (2006)
- The Smallpox Vaccination Program: Public Health in an Age of Terrorism (2005)
- Financing Vaccines in the 21st Century: Assuring Access and Availability (2003)
