An infection is the colonization of an organism by pathogens.
Infection is the action and effect of infecting or becoming infected . This clinical concept, coming from the Latin infectio , refers to the colonization of an organism by external species . These colonizing species are harmful to the normal functioning of the host organism.
All multicellular organisms experience some degree of colonization by outside species. However, this relationship is symbiotic and does not have harmful consequences for the host.
When colonization generates abnormalities (such as pain , irritation , etc.), an infection occurs. Active infection involves the fight between the host and the infecting organism, which tries to multiply. The transition from symbiotic colonization to infection depends on various circumstances and conditions.
An infection begins with the entry of the pathogen into the body and continues with an incubation period. From then on, the type of infection is determined by the number of germs, their ability to multiply and their toxicity.
Diseases caused by infection
An infectious disease is known as the clinical manifestation generated by an infection due to the action of viruses , bacteria , fungi or other organisms.
Malaria is an example of an infectious disease ; It is produced by parasites of the genus Plasmodium and has certain mosquitoes as vectors. Another infectious disease is toxoplasmosis , caused by the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii and transmitted to humans by cats and other feline species.
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome ( AIDS ) is also an infectious disease. It affects people infected with the HIV virus, transmitted through blood, semen, vaginal secretions and breast milk.
Infections can cause various diseases.
The term in computing
In the field of computing , we speak of an infection when a small program called a virus takes over a computer and attacks it, an event that has a wide variety of consequences, some of which are fatal . Listed below are some of the most curious viruses in history:
- Morris : It was developed in 1988 by a student named Robert Morris Jr. , and is considered the first worm (from the British term worm ), since it took advantage of a backdoor in the Unix system for its distribution. It is worth mentioning that it affected a large number of users, almost 10 percent of those who had an Internet connection.
- Melissa : It was spread in 1998 and directly attacked the Word program , Microsoft 's word processor. Its spread was carried out in the form of an attachment via email and, since it was automatically sent to the contacts of the infected computers, it generated trust in its recipients. Mainly, this macro virus disabled certain options of the aforementioned application and made modifications to the text documents that were open.
- I Love You : This was an email message that tricked its recipients into believing it contained a “love letter” as an attachment . In reality, it was a dangerous worm that deleted a large number of files of various extensions, including vbs , mp3 , css and jpg , and collected certain confidential data from the affected computer, later sending it to its developer.
- Red Code : It was a high-profile virus that attacked millions of users for the first time in 2001 . Its destination was the Microsoft Windows operating system , specifically the NT , 2000 and XP versions and its main requirement was that Microsoft IIS ( Internet Information Services , a series of services in the form of a computer package, specifically developed for said operating system) was installed. and that a particular patch had not been applied, which corrected important errors. Regarding its actions, it made certain changes to the system configuration and left a "back door" open.