Continuing Medical Education

Modern medicine is enabling people to live longer, but longer life results in an increase in age-related chronic diseases. Thus, there is a distinct need to understand the role of chronic diseases/disorders as a component of the aging process as we move forward in the 21st century. Chronic diseases may originate at any point in one?s life span and therefore, study of these processes is required from birth to the end of life. With a renewed interest in determining what causes chronic disease, one focus has centered on the role of microorganisms in this process. This program provides insight into a number of chronic diseases known to be caused by chronic infections. In addition, the program provides the health care professional with newer information on suspected associations of chronic diseases originally not thought to be infectious, but for which new evidence implicates chronic infection as a potential risk or causative factor. 

• Describe the associations between infectious agents and chronic diseases.
• Explain how chronic infection promotes systemic disease.
• Understand the pathogenesis of accepted infectious causation of chronic diseases.
• Understand newer associations between chronic infection and chronic diseases.
• Describe current research efforts to establish linkages between infection and chronic disease.
• Understand the diagnostic regimens, treatment, and vaccination approaches in combating chronic infectious disease.
• Explain the tremendous toll on human morbidity and mortality in relationship to chronic infection and chronic diseases as a function of the aging process.

Human Papillomavirus and Cervical Cancer
Saul Jeck, DO, FACOOG, Professor and Chairman, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine

Emerging Issues in Chronic Disease: Slime and Old Parasite
Edward S. Johnson, MD, Director of Infection Control & The Travelers Resource, Clara Maass Medical Center, Belleville, NJ