Microbial Pathogenesis & Infectious Diseases

Bacterial pathogenesis

Pathogenic bacteria are specially adapted and capable with mechanisms for overcoming the normal body defence and can attack parts of the body, such as the blood, where bacteria are not founded normally. Many of pathogens occurred only at the surface epithelium, skin or mucous membrane, but some travel more deeply, spreading through the tissues and disseminating by the lymphatic and blood streams. In some of the rare cases a pathogenic microbe can infect an entirely healthy person too, but infection usually occurs only if the body's defence mechanisms are damaged by some local trauma or an underlying incapacitating disease, such as wounding, intoxication, chilling, fatigue, and malnutrition. In many the cases, it is very important to differentiate infection and colonization, when the bacteria are causing little much or no harm.