Belmont Report

• Established in 1979 → basis of current ethical guidelines and federal regulations concerning human subject research

• Human volunteer research is only ethical under the following conditions:

  • Disease is not life-threatening

  • Disease is easily treatable or preventable with a vaccine

  • Disease treatment does no harm to the participants

IRB - Institutional review board a board made up of a diverse group of professionals at a given institution that must approve human clinical trials or research experiments involving human subjects

prospective study - Clinical trial involving inoculation of subjects with disease agent and/or treatment of infected humans “present → future”

retrospective study - Study of disease outbreaks that have already occurred → disease transmission; i.e., TB transmission on school bus

gnotobiotic animals - an animal raised in a sterile environment that has no bacteria in or on them; used for infection models of diseases

IACUC -  Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC); established by federal mandate at institutions that use live, vertebrate animals for research, teaching, and testing activities. The IACUC oversees and evaluates all aspects of the institution's animal care and use program.

CFU - colony-forming units; a measure of the number of viable bacteria in a sample; each colony on an agar plate arises from a single bacterium or a chain of bacteria

MOI - Multiplicity of infection; a unit of measure used in an inoculation, defined as the ratio of infectious agent to target cell

LD50 -  A term used to assess the virulence of a pathogen and develop intervention strategies in pathogenesis. Represents the amount of a microbe that can cause death in exactly half of the exposed animals (be familiar with graph)

ID50 - the number of microorganisms required to cause infection (as evidenced by a clearly defined symptom) in 50% of experimentally infected animals at a given time following infection; a measure of infectivity

Gentamicin - an antibiotic in the aminoglycoside family. Used in a cell-based infection assay that permits distinction between bacteria that attach to the surfaces of host cells and those that invade the cytoplasm of the host cell

Adhesion - The initial step in the pathogenesis process, where microbes attach to host cells or surfaces.

Invasion - The process by which pathogens penetrate host tissues, allowing them to enter the host and establish an infection.

Attachment - Refers specifically to the initial binding of bacteria to host cells or surfaces. This can involve specific interactions between bacterial adhesins and host receptors. It is often the first step in the infection process and may not involve a stable, long-term connection.

minimum MOI - used to compare invasiveness. Lower minMOI - more invasive