zachorowalno

Zachorowalno is a term that appears in some discussions of epidemiology to describe the propensity or likelihood that an exposed individual will develop illness after contact with a pathogenic agent. In practice, it is closely related to the concept of host susceptibility and is used together with measurements of exposure, transmission, and virulence to assess disease risk.

Etymology and usage notes: The root zachorować means to fall ill in Polish, and the suffix -alno functions to create a relational or adverbial form. In standard Polish sources the related noun zachorowalność is more common and denotes susceptibility to illness within a population. Zachorowalno, when encountered, is typically treated as a variant or informal way of referring to the same idea.

Measurement and interpretation: Zachorowalno is not a fixed property of a person; it is estimated in models as the probability of illness given exposure, often denoted as P(I|E). It depends on multiple factors, including age, immune status, vaccination history, comorbidities, nutritional status, prior immunity, and the dose and characteristics of the pathogen.

Determinants and applications: Understanding zachorowalno contributes to risk assessment, vaccine strategy, and outbreak modeling by highlighting who is more likely to become ill upon exposure. It is distinguished from transmissibility (how easily a pathogen spreads) and virulence (disease severity).

Limitations: The term zachorowalno is not uniformly standardized; many researchers prefer zachorowalność or other phrasing. Estimates rely on data quality and context, and definitions may vary across studies.

See also: zachorowalność, susceptibility, infection risk, exposure-dose response, epidemiology.