Causes of Viral diseases
Causes of Viral diseases: Viruses are infectious microbes that can be inside or outside cells. They are little strips of DNA (or RNA) usually wrapped inside a tiny capsule. Viruses are not even a single cell, but are a tiny part of a cell, and thus they are much smaller even than bacteria. Viruses are not alive in the normal sense. They do not feed, nor do they generate energy or waste products. Viruses are effectively inert until they attach to a live body cell. But once they attach, they become alive in a sense. They enter the cell, breaking open the capsule, so that their inside contents of DNA or RNA strips enter the cell. Because this viral DNA looks like normal DNA, the cell starts to copy it like the cell does to ordinary DNA. In this way, the body cell is tricked into making many copies of the virus inside the cell. Eventually, the cell is killed and these newly created viruses are expelled into the body to infect more cells.
Cause of Viral diseases: Unlike most bacteria, most viruses do cause disease because they invade living, normal cells, such as those in the human body. They then multiply and produce other viruses like themselves. Each virus is very particular about which cell it attacks. Various human viruses specifically attack particular cells in the body's organs, systems, or tissues, such as the liver, respiratory system, or blood cells. 1
Viral diseases as a symptom: Conditions listing Viral diseases as a symptom may also be potential underlying causes of Viral diseases. The list of conditions listing Viral diseases as a symptom in our database includes:
Causes of Viral diseases: medical news summaries: The following medical news items are relevant to causes of Viral diseases:
- 17 substances added to America’s list of carcinogens
- Chicken pox vaccine may prove effective against shingles as well
- Hepatitis is a contagious often misdiagnosed disease
- Herpes virus found in almost all healthy individuals
- People who received blood transfusions prior to 1975 may have been infected with Hepatitis C
Related information for causes of Viral diseases:
Further relevant information on causes of Viral diseases may be found
in the risk factors for Viral diseases
and underlying causes of Viral diseases.
Footnotes:
1. excerpt from Microbes in Sickness and in Health - Publications, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: NIAID
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