Over the next few years, the demand for new healthcare professionals is expected to rise. If you’re thinking of a new career in the healthcare industry, it might be time to look into getting a degree or license that will allow you to get a position in this field. Whether you’re looking for a first job or working towards advancement, knowing the vocabulary used in the healthcare industry is important. While physicians and specialists need to know all of the medical terminology for diseases, diagnoses, and drugs, anyone connected with the medical profession, from office worker to laboratory assistant, should be familiar with basic terms and concepts. Here are six vocabulary words related to healthcare that have been in the news recently:

• epidemic
• antibodies
• inflammation
• chronic
• dementia
• cognitive

In this post, we’ll talk about the first three words: epidemic, antibodies, and inflammation.

Every winter, the news broadcasts are full of stories about the latest influenza (usually shortened to “flu”) outbreaks, and the worry that not enough people will get vaccinated to prevent an epidemic. “Epidemic” means a widespread infection of the same disease. If a significant percentage of one country’s population, or more than one country, is involved, an epidemic may be reclassified as a pandemic. In 2009, the swine flu pandemic made over one million people ill worldwide, and at least sixteen thousand people died of the disease.

For every new strain of flu virus that appears, there is at least one new vaccine developed to fight it, but the human body does a great deal of its own to fight off viruses and infections. Proteins called antibodies (also known as “immunoglobins”) are created by the human immune system to detect and neutralize infection. Different antibodies react to different types of infections or viruses, and once a particular type has been recognized and destroyed, the immune system will “remember” what that virus or infection was like, and will “recognize” it the next time it appears, and fight it off immediately. The purpose of a vaccine is to give the immune system a very weak form of a new disease, so that it can create the antibodies and have them ready to go in case the real disease appears.

The body has many ways to fight off infection, including trying to destroy harmful organisms by burning them out of the system. A high fever is a symptom of many diseases, and is often the immune system’s response to an bacterial or viral infection, as it tries to raise the body’s temperature high enough to kill off the infection. This also happens on a smaller scale – one you’ve probably seen yourself, after getting an infected cut or scrape. The hot, red area that develops around the cut before it heals is the inflammation caused by the immune system. Inflammation (from the Latin for “to set on fire”) like this is usually short-lived and acute. However, inflammation can become chronic – a word we’ll look at next time.