Talk:autochthonous

The expression "autochthonous transmission" is used in medicine/epidemiology to refer to disease spread from one individual and acquired in another individual in the same place. The relevance of this is that some diseases are spread by vectors such as mosquitoes. Climate change means that particular species of mosquitoes now survive in places where they didn't previously survive, or have spread to areas where they were not previously found or had previously been eliminated. As a consequence autochthonous transmission has occurred of e.g. chikungunya fever has occurred in the Americas, and malaria in Spain.

Autochthonous may also be used in medicine to mean "found in the place where it was formed", e.g. an autochthonous blood clot.

--Penglish (talk) 15:58, 8 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Interesting, thanks for the info! I've added an example of the phrase "autochthonous blood clot" to the second definition in the entry and expanded the definition a bit; I think it covers the "found in the place where it was formed" sense you mention. I'll look into "autochthonous transmission" and see if I think another sense needs to be added to the entry. - -sche (discuss) 16:14, 8 July 2014 (UTC)