Patient Zero


Also found in: Idioms.
(1) A controversial figure in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, Gaëtan Dugas was a French-Canadian airline steward, whose sexual activity linked him to 40 of the first 248 men diagnosed of what was then known as gay-related immune deficiency—GRID. Dugas died of terminal renal failure, and had 4 episodes of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia before he died. He was so named based on a transmission scenario compiled by Dr. Wm. Darrow et al of the CDC. Darrow subsequently repudiated his conclusion, but the name stuck
(2) Based on the original ‘Patient Zero’, the generic term, ’patient zero', has expanded into general usage for any first case or onset of a catastrophic trend
Segen's Medical Dictionary. © 2012 Farlex, Inc. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
Second, the AI must mine internal data including past alerts, network and asset information, security logs, and the like to find clusters, associations, and patterns that can recreate the event's blast radius and attack progression, and determine the patient zero.
Worobey's team also examined HIV DNA from Patient Zero. He was part of a 1984 study of gay men with AIDS in Los Angeles who had a rare cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma or Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, both AIDS-related complications.
In the apocalyptic 2013 film, Pitt plays a UN worker searching for patient zero of a deadly zombie plague.
It might have been a sports coach who was essentially "patient zero" for several generations of winning players and coaches, or a corporate manager known for being an excellent mentor.
As Queen Margaery Tyrell on "Game of Thrones," Dormer plays a powerful and clever royal, not far from her Anne Boleyn in Showtime's "The Tudors." The actress has a lot on her docket, including more "Thrones" and Stefan Ruzowitzky's "Patient Zero." "I am proud to be part of the movement pushing forward," she says.
That movie scared a lot of people--including Matt Damon, who played Mitch Emhoff, Patient Zero's husband.
Sheen, who spent PS1million on sex workers in 2013 alone, has become known as Patient Zero in legal circles as California lawyers continue to receive calls from claimants.
By sharing and leveraging security events, it can act against potentially dangerous applications, downloads, websites and files at the moment suspicious behaviors are observed, and before a system becomes patient zero. Its extensible architecture provides a framework for IT teams who are burdened with multiple solutions to enhance protection, detection and correction against today's advanced threats.
High school students and undergraduates participated in a mock investigation to find "patient zero." The event was designed to highlight the importance of vaccinations and herd immunity, proper infection control and disease screening.
Mary's Hospital where the patient zero, called super spreader, infected more than 30 people, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
Eight other patients were all infected from the patient zero in his late 60s, raising possibility for the first patient to be a "super spreader" who disproportionately infects more people than others.
Patient Zero: Solving the Mysteries of Deadly Epidemics.

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