Infectious Disease Terms

A cancer vaccine made with a form of a chicken virus that does not cause disease in humans.

Ribavirin is a broad spectrum antiviral medication best known for treating respiratory syncytial virus infection and for use in combination regimens against hepatitis C.

A drug used to prevent the spread of a bacterium called in patients with advanced HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) infection.

Rifampin is an antibiotic most often used as a core component of combination treatment for tuberculosis and certain other mycobacterial infections.

Ritonavir is a protease-blocking HIV medication now used mainly at low doses to boost blood levels of other antivirals rather than as a standalone treatment.

Nearly every child meets it in the first years of life, and one infection gives only partial protection, so reinfection continues through adulthood.

A cancer vaccine made with a form of a vaccinia virus that does not cause disease in humans.

A drug used to treat hepatitis C infections.

SCID is a group of rare inherited disorders in which T lymphocyte function is severely impaired, leaving the immune system unable to fight infection.

A virus being studied in the treatment of neuroendocrine tumors and other types of cancer.

The presence of bacteria or their toxins in the blood or tissues.

An older word for bloodstream infection, largely retired because the danger comes from the body's reaction rather than the bacteria alone.

A virus that infects some types of monkeys.

A T cell is an immune cell, matured in the thymus, that attacks infected or abnormal cells or helps direct the immune response.

White cells schooled in a gland behind the breastbone, and the reason a transplanted organ is recognized as belonging to somebody else.

Timing dominates this one: it stops new virus particles escaping infected cells, so it does most good early, before the infection has peaked.

Infection and disease are not the same thing here, and most people who carry the bacteria never become ill or infectious.

A substance used to treat bacterial infections.

A substance that is derived from the toxin released by the bacterium that causes the disease tetanus.

One quirk explains both its research use and its drawback: the drug locks on to calcium wherever bone and teeth are forming.