Sterile or sterility may refer to: *

Asepsis Asepsis is the state of being free from disease-causing micro-organisms (such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses, pathogenic fungi, and parasites). There are two categories of asepsis: medical and surgical. The modern day notion of asepsis is deriv ...

, a state of being free from biological contaminants * Sterile (archaeology), a sediment deposit which contains no evidence of human activity *

Sterilization (microbiology) Sterilization refers to any process that removes, kills, or deactivates all forms of life (particularly microorganisms such as fungi, bacteria, spores, and unicellular eukaryotic organisms) and other biological agents such as prions present in or ...

, any process that eliminates or kills all forms of life or removes them from an item or a field *

Sterility (physiology) Sterility is the physiological inability to effect sexual reproduction in a living thing, members of whose kind have been produced sexually. Sterility has a wide range of causes. It may be an inherited trait, as in the mule; or it may be acquired f ...

, an inability of a living organism to effect sexual reproduction **

Infertility Infertility is the inability of a person, animal or plant to reproduce by natural means. It is usually not the natural state of a healthy adult, except notably among certain eusocial species (mostly haplodiploid insects). It is the normal state ...

, a medical condition which prevents a person, an animal or a plant from bearing children, especially through natural means * Sterile Records, a record label which was formed by Nigel Ayers and Caroline K of the post-industrial music group Nocturnal Emissions in London in 1979

See also