Medical Interventions Key Terms Set 1

25 Key Terms

An individual whose job is to deal with the communication of the different risks or happenings of a genetic disorder within a specific client family.

Genetic Counselor

A form of medical science that specializes in a concern with the different occurrences, distributions, causes, and methods of containment or control of different health products and epidemics that may take hold of a population.

Epidemiology

The injection of a weakened or otherwise harmless form of a pathogen into an individual for the purpose of stimulating the immune system to react and create a line of defense, or immunity, to this pathogen without the great risk of illness.

Vaccine

An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay is a quantitative test that checks for the presence of an antibody or antigen by putting a material onto a surface to be absorbed.  It is exposed to an enzyme linked to the matching antibody for the antigen or an enzyme linked to an anti-immunoglobulin for that antibody.  The enzyme then reacts with a substrate to create a change in color that signals if the antibody or antigen is in the substance, and in how large a concentration.

ELISA

A tiny ring of DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, that holds the accessory genes that are separate from the ones stored in the bacterial chromosome.

Plasmid

A loss, or diminishing, of one’s hearing that is the result of problems with the auditory nerves in the ear.

Sensorineural Hearing Loss

The process of a group being resistant to a disease due to a great number of the members of that group being immune to it, subsequently stopping the spread.

Herd Immunity

Any test or measure which serves the purpose of improving the health of an individual or changing the course or toll that a disease is taking on them.

Medical Intervention

Anything which contributes to the elevated risk or susceptibility of an individual.

Risk Factor

The application of different testing and methods to find out if an individual either has a genetic disorder, is going to develop one, or carries the gene without displaying outward symptoms.

Genetic Testing

The three bones in the ear which are very small and help to move sound vibrations from the eardrum to the cochlea, through the middle ear.  These bones include the malleus, incus, and stapes.

Ossicles

A catalyst protein, or a chemical agent that helps to change the rate of a reaction without being consumed by it.

Enzyme

The spiral-like cavity inside the inner ear which contains sensory hair cells that produce nerve impulses when stimulated by sound vibrations.  These impulses are then taken by the auditory nerve and sent to the brain in order to allow an individual to hear sound.

Cochlea

A loss, or diminishing, of hearing that occurs due to a blockage of the path of travel of sound waves to the cochlea.

Conductive Hearing Loss

The transfer of genetic material between to others, like bacteria, by a genetic vector.

Transduction

A sharp spike in the frequency of incidents of a given disease.

Outbreak

The process of biochemical and biological information being collected, classified, stored, and then analyzed by digital means, especially in regards to molecular genetics and genomics.

Bioinformatics

The inflammation of the meninges, or the protective membranes around the brain and spinal cord, which is caused by a viral or bacterial infection.  It leads to symptoms such as stiffness in the neck, headache, fever, and even permanent hearing loss or death in severe cases.

Meningitis

A specific agent which is known to be the cause of a disease.

Pathogen

The region of the bacterial cell which contains the deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA.

Nucleoid

A unit of hereditary information that is built by a certain sequence of DNA by nucleotides.

Gene

The transfer of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in a one-directional manner between two bacteria via the contact between two cells.

Conjugation

A substance which is made by or taken from a microorganism that is able to be diluted to then work to either kill or inhibit the action of a different microorganism.

Antibiotic

The process in which a cell takes in, and then begins to express, foreign DNA.

Transformation

A foreign macromolecule which is able to be recognized as not belonging naturally inside of a host organism, thus stimulating a response from the immune system of the infected individual.

Antigen