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List of chronic diseases linked to infectious pathogens
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==Difficulties in determining if a pathogen causes the disease== Determining whether a pathogen plays a causal role in a given chronic disease is difficult for the following reasons: * The time between contracting the infectious pathogen and the appearance of the first chronic disease symptoms can be lengthy, sometimes decades. * An infection may be asymptomatic when first contracted and go unnoticed. * An infectious pathogen may not cause its associated disease in every person. * Only specific strains of a pathogen may be linked to a disease; other strains may not be so harmful (for example, multiple sclerosis is strongly associated with certain genetic variants of Epstein-Barr virus).<ref name="Mechelli2015">{{Cite journal | last = Mechelli|first = Rosella | last2 = Manzari | first2 = Caterina | last3 = Policano | first3 = Claudia | last4 = Annese | first4 = Anita | last5 = Picardi | first5 = Ernesto | last6 = Umeton | first6 = Renato | last7 = Fornasiero | first7 = Arianna | last8 = D'Erchia | first8 = Anna Maria | last9 = Buscarinu | first9 = Maria Chiara | date = 2015-03-31 | title = Epstein-Barr virus genetic variants are associated with multiple sclerosis|url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25740864/|journal=Neurology|volume=84|issue=13|pages=1362–1368|doi=10.1212/WNL.0000000000001420|issn=1526-632X|pmc=4388746|pmid=25740864}}</ref> * A given disease may be precipitated by more than one pathogen. * A pathogen may precipitate the disease only in combination with one or more other causal factors. * A pathogenic microbe may only precipitate the disease when it breaches into and infects specific organs. When it infects different organs, a different disease (or no disease) may be precipitated. * Some pathogens are not easily detectable, and it is difficult to link hard-to-detect pathogens to a disease. * For obvious ethical reasons, you cannot inoculate pathogenic microbes into humans to see if they do cause the disease. * A pathogen may cause a disease indirectly, such as via autoimmune processes induced by the pathogen. In spite of the difficulties in obtaining proof of causality, investigation into the link between pathogenic microbes and chronic disease is ongoing, and there is a large volume of published studies which demonstrate these associations.
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