Essential Health Concepts: Public Health, Immunity, and Treatments

Essential Health Concepts

Public health encompasses the activities and services aimed at promoting, protecting, and restoring the health of populations.

The Immune System

The immune system is a complex network of organs, cells, and molecules that defends the body against infectious agents and abnormal cells, including cancerous cells.

Diagnosis

Diagnosis is the process of identifying a disease and determining its primary cause.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy involves the use of chemical drugs to combat disease.

Disinfectants and Antiseptics

• Disinfectants: Substances used to destroy microorganisms on objects.
• Antiseptics: Substances used to eliminate microorganisms that colonize tissues, such as skin.

Antibiotics

Antibiotics are chemicals that destroy or inhibit the growth of bacteria.

• Bactericidal: Destroy microorganisms.
• Bacteriostatic: Hinder the reproduction of bacteria.

Surgery and Transplantation

Surgery involves the direct manipulation of the organism to establish a diagnosis or repair anatomical damage to cure disease. A transplant is a surgical technique to replace an irreversibly damaged organ or tissue with one from a donor.

Rejection

Rejection is an immune response triggered when the recipient's immune system recognizes antigens on the cells of the transplanted organ and attempts to destroy it.

Cell Therapy

Cell therapy treats disease by introducing differentiated cells, cultured from embryonic or adult stem cells, into the body.

Examples

• Antibiotics: Penicillin
• Sanitizer: Alcohol
• Antiseptic: Hydrogen peroxide
• Analgesic Narcotic: Acetylsalicylic acid
• Antipyretic: Acetylsalicylic acid

Food Preservation Techniques

Food preservation techniques, such as sterilization, are used to guarantee the quality of perishable foods.

Gamete Intrafallopian Transfer (GIFT)

Similar to in vitro fertilization (IVF), but the gametes are transferred directly to the fallopian tubes.

Protein Function

Proteins have diverse functions:

• Energy reserve
• Movement (e.g., actin/myosin)
• Structural (e.g., DNA structure, keratin, collagen)
• Defensive (e.g., immunoglobulin)
• Hormonal (e.g., insulin)
• Enzymatic or catalytic: Accelerate chemical reactions (e.g., lipase and protease)

Symptoms and Signs

• Symptom: A subjective reference reported by a patient, or a change in perception recognized as abnormal, caused by an illness.
• Sign: A disorder that may indicate the cause of a disease.

Antibodies and Antigens

• Antibody: Produced in response to the entry of an antigen.
• Antigen: Any foreign substance capable of triggering an immune response.

Endoscopic Techniques

Examples include colonoscopy, gastroscopy, cystoscopy, and laparoscopy.