Blood-borne disease
disease that can be spread through contamination by blood and other body fluids
A blood-borne disease is a disease that can be spread through contamination by blood and other body fluids. Blood can contain pathogens of various types, chief among which are microorganisms, like bacteria and parasites, and non-living infectious agents such as viruses. Three blood-borne pathogens in particular, all viruses, are cited as of primary concern to health workers by the CDC-NIOSH: human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C.
Diseases that are not usually transmitted directly by blood contact, but rather by insect or other vector, are more usefully classified as vector-borne disease, even though the causative agent can be found in blood. Vector-borne diseases include West Nile virus, zika fever and malaria.
Many blood-borne diseases can also be contracted by other means, including high-risk sexual behavior or intravenous drug use. These diseases have also been identified in sports medicine.
Since it is difficult to determine what pathogens any given sample of blood contains, and some blood-borne diseases are lethal, standard medical practice regards all blood (and any body fluid) as potentially infectious. "Blood and body fluid precautions" are a type of infection control practice that seeks to minimize this sort of disease transmission.
Occupational exposure
Blood poses the greatest threat to health in a laboratory or clinical setting due to needlestick injuries (e.g., lack of proper needle disposal techniques and/or safety syringes). Needles are not the only issue, as direct splashes of blood also cause transmission.
“Blood-borne disease” enters the record as disease that can be spread through contamination by blood and other body fluids. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Blood-borne, disease and spread can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4927522. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Blood-borne disease” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.