Zoonosis | |
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A dog with rabies. | |
Classification and external resources | |
Specialty | Infectious disease |
DiseasesDB | 28555 |
MeSH | D015047 |
Zoonoses (/ˌzoʊ.əˈnoʊsᵻs/, plural -/ˈnoʊsiːz/, also spelled zoönoses; singular zoonosis (or zoönosis); from Greek: ζῷον zoon "animal" and νόσος nosos "sickness") are infectious diseases of animals (usually vertebrates) that can naturally be transmitted to humans.
Major modern diseases such as Ebola virus disease and salmonellosis are zoonoses. HIV was a zoonotic disease transmitted to humans in the early part of the 20th century, though it has now evolved to a separate human-only disease. Most strains of influenza that infect humans are human diseases, although many strains of swine and bird flu are zoonoses; these viruses occasionally recombine with human strains of the flu and can cause pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish flu or the 2009 swine flu. Zoonoses can be caused by a range of disease pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites; of 1,415 pathogens known to infect humans, 61% were zoonotic. Most human diseases originated in animals; however, only diseases that routinely involve animal to human transmission, like rabies, are considered direct zoonosis.