Scientific term for infected person with full-blown symptoms?

Symptomatic vs asymptomatic?

When you are only infected but have no pathological laboratory results or symptoms, you don't even have a disease. After detecting rabies virus in your body you are "positive for rabies virus," but you do not have rabies; sometimes it is called "asymptomatic rabies."

The same way, after detecting HIV viruses in your blood you have a "HIV infection," which becomes "AIDS" only after typical changes in white blood cells or when symptoms appear.

Viral pneumonia without symptoms but with abnormal blood tests and X-ray image is "asymptomatic viral pneumonia" and with symptoms it's simply "viral pneumonia."
You can have "severe pneumonia," but, in general, there are no stronger medical terms for "full-blown symptoms." Rarely, when microorganisms invade the blood, you have "septic pneumonia" or "pneumonia with sepsis," but not every severe pneumonia goes with sepsis.

The thing that came to my mind was the concept of HIV and AIDS. Like, HIV always comes before AIDS, never the other way around.

Could you come up for a name for "the virus that causes zombie-ness"?

ZIV...

Lunatique said:

In my book, if you are infected (through bites or contact with infected bodily fluid in open wounds or orifices that don't have the protection of the epidermis), you have a period of time before you are "turned" into a raging homicidal lunatic. It could be anywhere between minutes to days, depending on where you got infected and how.

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The period between actually being infected and showing symptoms is called the incubation period. Not sure there is a scientific name for when you do get the symptoms, at least I can't remember hearing one.

You might want to check out the CDC pages on Zombie apocalypse prepardness. The British Columbia government in Canada has a similar thing. -I think that is as close to an official response to a zombie outbreak you can get.

Stages of an infection are:
Incubation period: from the entrance of microorganism into the body to first symptoms
Prodromal stage: the period from the onset of nonspecific symptoms, like malaise or fever, to more specific ones, like cough or chest pain
Illness stage: This is what you are asking
Convalescence: Recovery period

Or it can be a latent phase and active phase of a disease. These terms are used, for example, in borreliosis (Lyme disease) and in parasitic infestations. Latent basically means asymptomatic.

All above are general terms and I'm not aware of more specific or dramatic terms for full blown symptoms in general.

But.

In specific infections there can be phases with specific names.

In Varicella zoster infection (shingles) you have an incubation period followed by a rash stage followed by a latent stage (the virus remains inactive in the nerve ganglia).

In syphilis, you have a primary, secondary, latent and terciary stage, which can be named more specifically according to symptoms.

In leprosy, you have tuberculoid and lepromatous leprosy.

The first stage of Lyme disease is officially called "early localized infection," which is followed by "early disseminated infection" and "latent persistent infection." When doctors explain these stages on TV they can just name the stages by typical symptoms like red circular rash or arthritis...

So you can just invent the names of stages according to either pathological course of the disease or symptoms.

When you ask how officials would call the disease, do you mean discussions among professionals or public announcements about the disease?

Lunatique said:

I mean public announcements. Among each other, the scientists will likely use whatever inside-joke or slang terms they've come up with. If communicating with an unfamiliar professional, they'd use the official version of the term.

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ZIV...

Lunatique said:

Doesn't sound scientific. You have to approach it like the way an actual scientist would, using scientific terminology. The Z in ZIV obviously refers to zombie, and I don't think that's a scientific term?

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HIV stands for "human immunodeficiency virus", so I would imagine you could use the same concept for "zombie immunodeficiency virus".

But I WAS being somewhat tongue in cheek... what I mean is, like HIV-AIDS, can you come up with an acronym(s) to represent the pre-symptom and/or post-symptom period?

Like...
AZIV (acquired zombie infection virus)
ZIA (zombie infection agent)
CZID (chronic zombie infection disease)

What words would work with the vocabulary of your book?

Lunatique said:

That's the dilemma. I don't think there is a scientific term for "zombie," or a "raging homicidal lunatic," since both are fictional. Even details about the closest real life example of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (zombie ant) doesn't seem to contain terms that help in solving my problem.

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If you're writing horror fiction, I think you've already suspended 'scientific' disbelief somewhat... I mean, the majority of people would agree that (in real life) dead people don't come back to life as raging homicidal lunatics. So for that reason, I don't think you would have a problem using the term "zombie".

Wikipedia says a zombie is an "animated corpse resurrected by mystical means".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie

I suppose you could play on the term "undead"... like, "reverse animation of blood circulation".

I know the terms "tachycardia" and "bradycardia" are used for fast and slow heart rates, respectively. The term 'cardia' is Greek for heart. 'Nekros' means dead. Maybe something like 'nekrocardia'?

So what would NIH call zombies or zombiism? If it were the disease , bacterial or viral sort of zombiism, then I would guess that it would be bacterial induced near catatonic syndrome, or something along those lines. The traditional chemically induced condition, then it would be something else.

Regarding the original post, "active" and "symptomatic" are technical terms that fit, as was noted above.

Other options include "accelerated" or "end-stage," depending on your context.

reanimated-- Post-mortem regenesis
dormant case-- latent infectious psychosis
active case-- violent infectious psychosis

Have your characters laugh at the government's idiotic choice of terms and acronyms--until one of them gets eaten.

Lunatique said:

Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but the realism of portraying how the government will actually respond to a zombie outbreak needs a lot of forethought, including the scientific terms the scientists will use to inform the public about the outbreak. They're not going to use the term "zombies" in any official manner--that doesn't seem realistic to me.

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Actually, if this is the American government you're writing about... http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm

Hopefully I'm not reviving a stale post, but found the thread interesting. One idea is that you could consider referring to in terms of Stage III or Stage IV 'Zombie-ism/-itis/Zombosis... whatever. If it's truly a made up disease and it's terminal, might as well classify it the same way they do cancers. Just a thought!