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Koch's postulate

Koch's postulate noun: any of four criteria designed to establish a causative relationship between a microbe and a disease: (i) the microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms; (ii) it must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture; (iii) the cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism; (iv) the microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.

Noun

Koch's postulate (plural Koch's postulates)

  1. Any of four criteria designed to establish a causative relationship between a microbe and a disease: (i) the microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms; (ii) it must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture; (iii) the cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism; (iv) the microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.

Forms of Koch's postulate

pluralKoch's postulates

Origin of Koch's postulate

Formulated by Robert Koch and Friedrich Loeffler in 1884.

Questions about Koch's postulate

What does Koch's postulate mean?
Koch's postulate means any of four criteria designed to establish a causative relationship between a microbe and a disease: (i) the microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms; (ii) it must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture; (iii) the cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism; (iv) the microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.
What part of speech is Koch's postulate?
Koch's postulate is a noun.
What is the plural of Koch's postulate?
The plural of Koch's postulate is Koch's postulates.

Words near Koch's postulate in the dictionary

  1. Koch Hajo
  2. Koch snowflake
  3. Koch snowflakes
  4. Koch's bacilli
  5. Koch's bacillus
  6. Koch's postulate
  7. Koch's postulates
  8. Koch's sign
  9. Koch's signs
  10. Koch's triangle
  11. Kochab

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Koch's postulate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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