Talk:Minimal infective dose

"the amount of pathogen (measured in number of microorganisms) required to cause an infection in the host."

Is that really the definition? For viruses, one would think that even a single infectious virus particle would be enough to cause an infection, if with very low probability—is it the same for bacteria, or is a larger number of those needed to establish infection? Anyway, how is the infectious dose defined in terms of the probability of developing an infection? I'm not willing to believe that jumps from 0% to 100% at one specific dose.

Just came across this article now, and added a reference for the above link. Someone with better expertise may want to verify within the abstract: DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1002512.--Ethylfox (talk) 06:19, 30 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, the article has been changed since it said that. But you're right, a single virion or bacterium could cause an infection, with low probability, as I understand it. The more one is exposed, the lower the chance of not being infected.
 * Here is a link to the article you found:
 * Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:39, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

This article really doesn't preserve the encyclopedic tone of the wiki.
I'm almost certain somebody's copy pasted some article written on a science blog or something. Either way, it needs a serious overhaul. DeliriousWolf (talk) 15:36, 16 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, an edit comment says it was translated from the French Wikipedia. I don't know whether that was from a blog, but the French style and some poor translating make it sound that way! Thanks for your work on it. By the way, I added a sentence to explain the formula where you put a "clarification needed" tag. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 10:39, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Overhaul
It seems like this article is less about minimal infective doses and more about refuting the concept. Even if it's an outdated or disproven theory (not sure if this is true), this is still a page about that theory. I fixed some of the weird tone and sentence structure, but since I don't know a lot about bacteria or epidemiology, I can't contribute much to the page content. Definitely needs some work. Tropicalorchid (talk) 08:23, 21 November 2023 (UTC)