Pathogens and Disease: GCSE Communicable Disease Game

How to play Pathogens and Disease

Pathogens and Disease is a free GCSE biology game about communicable disease. A communicable disease can pass from one person, animal or plant to another. Pathogens cause it. They are microbes, such as viruses and bacteria, that are too small to see without a microscope. A round is ten questions long. It has three steps, and every question gives you four answers.

The first three questions name a disease, and you pick the kind of pathogen that causes it. In the next four, you choose how a disease spreads or which step controls it. The last three are about vaccines, white blood cells and antibiotics. A small tag under each disease question shows whether AQA or Edexcel names that disease.

Each question has a bonus clock of 15 seconds. You score 10 points for a right answer, and 5 more if you answer in time. When the clock hits zero you can still answer, but the bonus is gone. Tick Harder start to skip the first step and go straight to spread and control. Practice mode turns the clock off. Keys 1 to 4 pick an answer, and Enter moves you on. After each answer, a short note reminds you of the science behind it.

The science behind communicable disease

A pathogen is a microorganism that causes disease. There are four groups: viruses, bacteria, fungi and protists. Viruses live and reproduce inside your cells, and this damages the cells. Bacteria are single cells. They can multiply quickly once inside you, and some release toxins. A toxin is a poison that harms your tissues. Pathogens can infect plants as well as animals.

Some pathogens pass by touch. Others travel in water or in the air. Measles spreads in droplets from coughs and sneezes. Cholera spreads in dirty water. Salmonella bacteria get into food that was not cooked or prepared safely. HIV and gonorrhoea pass on through sexual contact, and HIV also spreads when drug users share needles. Malaria is caused by a protist. Mosquitoes carry it from person to person, so we call them vectors. The spores of rose black spot, a fungus, move to new leaves in water and wind.

Each route has its own way to stop it. Young children have the measles vaccine. In the UK, poultry get a vaccine against Salmonella. Condoms cut the spread of gonorrhoea and chlamydia. Nets stop mosquitoes biting people at night. Gardeners remove and destroy leaves with black spot, or spray a fungicide, which is a chemical that kills fungi.

Your body keeps most pathogens out. Your skin is a barrier, and your nose, airways and stomach acid trap or kill many more. If a pathogen gets past these, white blood cells attack it. Some take it in and digest it, which is called phagocytosis. Others make antibodies or antitoxins. A vaccine puts a dead or inactive form of a pathogen into your body, so your white blood cells learn to make the right antibodies. When most people have the vaccine, the pathogen has few people left to spread to.

Antibiotics, such as penicillin, kill bacteria inside the body. They cannot kill viruses. Painkillers ease symptoms but leave the pathogen alive. Some bacteria are now resistant to antibiotics, which means the drugs no longer kill them. You can put the parts of a bacterial cell in place in Cell Builder.

AQA covers this in Biology 8461 and Combined Science 8464, sections 4.3.1.1 to 4.3.1.8. Edexcel 1BI0 and 1SC0 cover it in 5.4 to 5.6, 5.8, 5.13, 5.14 and 5.16. Helicobacter and Ebola appear in 1BI0 only. OCR J247 covers it in B6.3, and OCR J257 in B2.1 to B2.3 and B2.6. The diseases in the game come from the AQA and Edexcel lists, and J257 names several of them too.

Tips for communicable disease questions

• For AQA, learn one pair for each group. Measles and HIV are viruses. Salmonella and gonorrhoea are bacteria. Rose black spot is a fungus, and malaria is a protist.
• For Edexcel, add cholera, TB and chlamydia to the bacteria, and Chalara ash dieback to the fungi.
• Match the control step to the route. A net blocks a mosquito, a condom blocks sexual contact, and a vaccine protects the body it goes into.
• Antibodies and antibiotics sound alike. Your white blood cells make antibodies. Antibiotics are medicines.
• Any answer that uses antibiotics against a virus is wrong.
• A vaccine holds a dead or inactive pathogen. It holds no medicine, and it does not give you the disease.

Use this communicable disease game in the classroom

Pathogens and Disease suits Years 9 to 11 when you teach infection and response. One round lasts about five minutes. Use it to open a lesson, or at the end to see what stuck.

Before you play, hand out a table with four columns: disease, pathogen group, how it spreads and how to control it. Play a round together on the board. Students fill in a row each time a new disease comes up. After a few rounds, ask them to finish the empty rows from their notes.

The last step makes a good discussion. Ask why a vaccine from years ago still protects you today. Then ask why a doctor will not give antibiotics for a cold, which a virus causes. Many students expect antibiotics to cure any infection, and this question brings that idea into the open.

Students need no account to play, and practice mode gives extra thinking time. Our privacy page explains what the site keeps. The teachers page has more ideas for lessons.

Questions about communicable disease

These are short answers to common questions about pathogens and how disease spreads.