Describe the process of defining that an infective agent causes a disease as def

Question

Describe the process of defining that an infective agent causes a disease as defined by Koch’s postulates and give FOUR (4) reasons as to why Koch’s postulate being too restrictive? Describe the process of defining that an infective agent causes a disease as defined by Koch’s postulates and give FOUR (4) reasons as to why Koch’s postulate being too restrictive? Describe the process of defining that an infective agent causes a disease as defined by Koch’s postulates and give FOUR (4) reasons as to why Koch’s postulate being too restrictive?

Explanation / Answer

The process of defining that an infective agent causes a disease as defined by Koch’s
postulates:

1) The infective agent must be found in all organisms suffering from the disease i.e in unhealthy organisms, but should not be found in healthy organisms.

2) The infective agent isolated from a diseased ( or unhealthy) organism and can be grown in pure culture.

3) The cultured infective agent will cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.

4) The infective agent will reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and must be identical to the original specific infective agent.


Reasons as to why Koch’s postulate being too restrictive are:


1) These postulates are useful for most bacteria but not all. Then in these cases, Koch’s postulates has to br modified such as some microbes have unique culture conditions.

2) Some diseases for example pneumonia and nephritis can caused by a variety of microbes therefore, difficult to determine the causative agent

3) It is not ethically applied as Certain pathogens, for example HIV, cause disease in humans only

4) The microbe which cannot be grown in pure culture. In these cases, there is no animal model of infection with that pathogen.

5) Harmless microbes can cause disease if they have certain virulence factors, gain access to deep tissues (eg. trauma, surgery) etc.

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