Infectivity

In epidemiology, infectivity is the ability of a pathogen to establish an infection. More specifically, infectivity is a pathogen's capacity for horizontal transmission that is, how frequently it spreads among hosts that are not in a parent-child relationship. The measure of infectivity in a population is called incidence.

Infectivity has been shown to positively correlate with virulence. This means that as a pathogen's ability to infect a greater number of hosts increases, so does the level of harm it brings to the host.^[1]

A pathogen's infectivity is subtly but importantly different from its transmissibility, which refers to a pathogen's capacity to pass from parent to child.

References

↑ Stewart, AD; Logsdon, JM; Kelley, SE (April 2005). "An empirical study of the evolution of virulence under both horizontal and vertical transmission". Evolution. 59 (4): 730–739. doi:10.1554/03-330. PMID 15926685.

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Definition

Clinical research and experimental design

Overview	Clinical trial Trial protocols Adaptive clinical trial Academic clinical trials Clinical study design

Controlled study (EBM I to II-1; A to B)	Randomized controlled trial Scientific experiment Blind experiment Open-label trial

Observational study (EBM II-2 to II-3; B to C)	Cross-sectional study vs. Longitudinal study, Ecological study Cohort study Retrospective Prospective Case-control study (Nested case-control study) Case series Case study Case report

Epidemiology/ methods	occurrence: Incidence (Cumulative incidence) Prevalence Point Period association: absolute (Absolute risk reduction, Attributable risk, Attributable risk percent) relative (Relative risk, Odds ratio, Hazard ratio) other: Clinical endpoint Virulence Infectivity Mortality rate Morbidity Case fatality rate Specificity and sensitivity Likelihood-ratios Pre/post-test probability

Trial/test types	In vitro In vivo Animal testing Animal testing on non-human primates First-in-man study Multicenter trial Seeding trial Vaccine trial

Analysis of clinical trials	Risk–benefit ratio Systematic review Replication Meta-analysis

Interpretation of results	Selection bias Survivorship bias Correlation does not imply causation Null result

Category Glossary List of topics

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Infectivity

See also

References

External links