multihit

Multihit is a term used in several fields to describe situations in which a final outcome depends on more than one successful event. The exact meaning varies by domain, but common threads are that a single event is not enough and that the number of contributing events matters for the result.

In biology and medicine, the multihit concept appears in models of infection and cell damage. In virology, the multihit model describes infection as requiring a threshold number of bound or internalized virions for successful entry and replication, contrasting with single-hit models where one particle suffices. This framework helps explain how neutralizing antibodies and varying exposure levels affect infection probabilities. In radiobiology, the multihit (or multi-hit) target theory posits that cellular lethality results from the accumulation of several sublethal energy depositions to critical targets, influencing how dose-response relationships are interpreted.

In baseball, a multihit game refers to a player achieving two or more hits in a single game. It is a common shorthand used by commentators and fans, though it is not a separate official stat beyond the standard hit count.

Outside sports and medicine, multihit can describe approaches that involve multiple mutations or events. For example, multihit mutagenesis in genetics refers to methods that introduce several mutations to explore sequence space, and multi-hit analysis can describe models where outcomes depend on the accumulation of several factors.