Zoonosis

Zoonosis (pronounced as zoh-ON-ah-sis) is any infectious diseasethat may be transmitted from other animals, both wild and domestic, to humans.

The word is derived from the Greekwords zoon (animal) (pronounced as zoo-on) and nosos(disease). Many serious diseases fall under this category.

The plural of zoonosis is zoonoses, from which an alternative singular zoonose is derived by back-formation.

The simplest definition of zoonosis is a diseasethat can be transmitted from other animals to humans. A slightly more technical definition is a disease that normally exists in other animals, but can also infect humans. On other occasions it may be used to mean a disease that can complete its life cycle without a human host. None of these are wrong, although the first is overly simplistic.

The emerging interdisciplinary field of conservation medicine, which integrates human and veterinary medicine, and environmental sciences, is largely concerned with zoonoses.



Taken from: http://www.lumrix.net/medical/parasitology/zoonosis.html