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Laboratory-acquired Infection
A laboratory-acquired infection or LAI is an infection that is acquired in a laboratory, usually as part of a medical research facility or hospital. Causes There are various microbes, viruses, fungi, and parasites that can infect a host via several routes of transmission. Prevention Laboratory facilities handling microbes, viruses and/or parasites adhere to various Biosafety level, biosecurity measures in order to prevent List of accidents and incidents involving laboratory biosecurity, biosecurity accidents and incidents. OECD Best Practice Guidelines for Biological Resource Centres In 2001, experts from OECD countries created a consensus report called, calling upon "national governments to undertake actions to bring the BRC concept into being in concert with the international scientific community". The report details "Biological Resource Centres" (BRCs) as "repositories and providers of high-quality biological materials and information". History The first laboratory-acqui ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microorganisms
A microorganism, or microbe,, ''mikros'', "small") and ''organism'' from the el, ὀργανισμός, ''organismós'', "organism"). It is usually written as a single word but is sometimes hyphenated (''micro-organism''), especially in older texts. The informal synonym ''microbe'' () comes from μικρός, mikrós, "small" and βίος, bíos, "life". is an organism of microscopic size, which may exist in its single-celled form or as a colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen microbial life was suspected from ancient times, such as in Jain scriptures from sixth century BC India. The scientific study of microorganisms began with their observation under the microscope in the 1670s by Anton van Leeuwenhoek. In the 1850s, Louis Pasteur found that microorganisms caused food spoilage, debunking the theory of spontaneous generation. In the 1880s, Robert Koch discovered that microorganisms caused the diseases tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, and anthrax. Because micr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gastrointestinal Tract
The gastrointestinal tract (GI tract, digestive tract, alimentary canal) is the tract or passageway of the digestive system that leads from the mouth to the anus. The GI tract contains all the major organ (biology), organs of the digestive system, in humans and other animals, including the esophagus, stomach, and intestines. Food taken in through the mouth is digestion, digested to extract nutrients and absorb energy, and the waste expelled at the anus as feces. ''Gastrointestinal'' is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the stomach and intestines. Nephrozoa, Most animals have a "through-gut" or complete digestive tract. Exceptions are more primitive ones: sponges have small pores (ostium (sponges), ostia) throughout their body for digestion and a larger dorsal pore (osculum) for excretion, comb jellies have both a ventral mouth and dorsal anal pores, while cnidarians and acoels have a single pore for both digestion and excretion. The human gastrointestinal tract consists o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virology
Virology is the Scientific method, scientific study of biological viruses. It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host (biology), host cell (biology), cells for reproduction, their interaction with host organism physiology and immunity, the diseases they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their use in research and therapy. The identification of the causative agent of tobacco mosaic disease (TMV) as a novel pathogen by Martinus Beijerinck (1898) is now acknowledged as being the history of virology, official beginning of the field of virology as a discipline distinct from bacteriology. He realized the source was neither a bacterial nor a fungal infection, but something completely different. Beijerinck used the word "virus" to describe the mysterious agent in his 'contagium vivum fluidum' ('contagious living fluid'). Rosalind Franklin proposed the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medical Research
Medical research (or biomedical research), also known as experimental medicine, encompasses a wide array of research, extending from "basic research" (also called ''bench science'' or ''bench research''), – involving fundamental scientific principles that may apply to a ''preclinical'' understanding – to clinical research, which involves studies of people who may be subjects in clinical trials. Within this spectrum is applied research, or translational research, conducted to expand knowledge in the field of medicine. Both clinical and preclinical research phases exist in the pharmaceutical industry's drug development pipelines, where the clinical phase is denoted by the term ''clinical trial''. However, only part of the clinical or preclinical research is oriented towards a specific pharmaceutical purpose. The need for fundamental and mechanism-based understanding, diagnostics, medical devices, and non-pharmaceutical therapies means that pharmaceutical research i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biotechnology Risk
Biotechnology risk is a form of existential risk that could come from biological sources, such as genetically engineered biological agents. The origin of such a high-consequence pathogen could be a deliberate release (in the form of bioterrorism or biological weapons), an accidental release, or a naturally occurring event. A chapter on biotechnology and biosecurity was published in Nick Bostrom's 2008 anthology ''Global Catastrophic Risks'', which covered risks including as viral agents. Since then, new technologies like CRISPR and gene drives have been introduced. While the ability to deliberately engineer pathogens has been constrained to high-end labs run by top researchers, the technology to achieve this (and other astonishing feats of bioengineering) is rapidly becoming cheaper and more widespread. Such examples include the diminishing cost of sequencing the human genome (from $10 million to $1,000), the accumulation of large datasets of genetic information, the discovery ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dora Lush
Dora Mary Lush (31 July 1910 – 20 May 1943) was an Australian bacteriologist. She died after accidentally pricking her finger with a needle which contained lethal scrub typhus while attempting to develop a vaccine for the disease. Early life Lush was born in Hawthorn, Victoria, the daughter of John Fullarton Lush, a clerk, and his wife Dora Emma Louisa . She had two brothers, who served as officers in the Second AIF and RAAF during World War II. She was educated at Fintona Girls' School and the University of Melbourne, gaining a B.Sc. in 1932 and an M.Sc. in 1934. She was an active sportswoman, being selected for the University of Melbourne's women's basketball team. Research Lush worked at the National Institute for Medical Research, London, from early in 1939. She returned to Australia. Her work on the influenza virus was praised in 1940. She worked with Frank Macfarlane Burnet at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne on a scrub typhus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Koch–Pasteur Rivalry
The French Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) and German Robert Koch (1843–1910) are the two greatest figures in medical microbiology and in establishing acceptance of the germ theory of disease (germ theory). In 1882, fueled by national rivalry and a language barrier, the tension between Pasteur and the younger Koch erupted into an acute conflict. Pasteur had already discovered molecular chirality, investigated fermentation, refuted spontaneous generation, inspired Lister's introduction of antisepsis to surgery, introduced pasteurization to France's wine industry, answered the silkworm diseases blighting France's silkworm industry, attenuated a '' Pasteurella'' species of bacteria to develop vaccine to chicken cholera (1879), and introduced anthrax vaccine (1881). Koch had transformed bacteriology by introducing the technique of pure culture, whereby he established the microbial cause of the disease anthrax (1876), had introduced both staining and solid culture plates to bacteri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
OECD
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade. It is a forum whose member countries describe themselves as committed to democracy and the market economy, providing a platform to compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practices, and coordinate domestic and international policies of its members. The majority of OECD members are high-income economies with a very high Human Development Index (HDI), and are regarded as developed countries. Their collective population is 1.38 billion. , the OECD member countries collectively comprised 62.2% of global nominal GDP (US$49.6 trillion) and 42.8% of global GDP ( Int$54.2 trillion) at purchasing power parity. The OECD is an official United Nations observer. In April 1948, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Accidents And Incidents Involving Laboratory Biosecurity
This list of laboratory biosecurity incidents includes accidental laboratory-acquired infections and laboratory releases of lethal pathogens, containment failures in or during transport of lethal pathogens, and incidents of exposure of lethal pathogens to laboratory personnel, improper disposal of contaminated waste, and/or the escape of laboratory animals. The list is grouped by the year in which the accident or incident occurred and does not include every reported laboratory-acquired infection. See also * Biological hazard * Biosafety level * Laboratory safety * List of anthrax outbreaks * Select agent Under United States law, Biological select agents or toxins (BSATs) — or simply select agents for short — are bio-agents which (since 1997) have been declared by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or by the U.S. Departme ... * Cambridge Working Group External Links A Review of Laboratory-Acquired Infections in the Asia-Pacific: Understanding R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vector (epidemiology)
In epidemiology, a disease vector is any living agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen to another living organism; agents regarded as vectors are organisms, such as parasites or microbes. The first major discovery of a disease vector came from Ronald Ross in 1897, who discovered the malaria pathogen when he dissected a mosquito. Arthropods Arthropods form a major group of pathogen vectors with mosquitoes, flies, sand flies, lice, fleas, ticks, and mites transmitting a huge number of pathogens. Many such vectors are haematophagous, which feed on blood at some or all stages of their lives. When the insects feed on blood, the pathogen enters the blood stream of the host. This can happen in different ways. The ''Anopheles'' mosquito, a vector for malaria, filariasis, and various arthropod-borne-viruses (arboviruses), inserts its delicate mouthpart under the skin and feeds on its host's blood. The parasites the mosquito carries are usually located in its salivary gla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
