No specific treatment is available, but antibiotics can be used to prevent secondary infections.

Vaccines are available (ATCvet codes: for the inactivated vaccine, for the live vaccine; plus various combinations).

Biosecurity protocols including adequate isolation, disinfection are important in controlling the spread of the disease.

Infectious mononucleosis is generally self-limiting, so only symptomatic or supportive treatments are used. The need for rest and return to usual activities after the acute phase of the infection may reasonably be based on the person's general energy levels. Nevertheless, in an effort to decrease the risk of splenic rupture experts advise avoidance of contact sports and other heavy physical activity, especially when involving increased abdominal pressure or the Valsalva maneuver (as in rowing or weight training), for at least the first 3–4 weeks of illness or until enlargement of the spleen has resolved, as determined by a treating physician.

Paracetamol (acetaminophen) and NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen, may be used to reduce fever and pain. Prednisone, a corticosteroid, while used to try to reduce throat pain or enlarged tonsils, remains controversial due to the lack of evidence that it is effective and the potential for side effects. Intravenous corticosteroids, usually hydrocortisone or dexamethasone, are not recommended for routine use but may be useful if there is a risk of airway obstruction, a very low platelet count, or hemolytic anemia.

There is little evidence to support the use of antivirals such as aciclovir and valacyclovir although they may reduce initial viral shedding. Although antivirals are not recommended for people with simple infectious mononucleosis, they may be useful (in conjunction with steroids) in the management of severe EBV manifestations, such as EBV meningitis, peripheral neuritis, hepatitis, or hematologic complications.

Although antibiotics exert no antiviral action they may be indicated to treat bacterial secondary infections of the throat, such as with streptococcus (strep throat). However, ampicillin and amoxicillin are not recommended during acute Epstein–Barr virus infection as a diffuse rash may develop.

There is no specific treatment for infectious mononucleosis, other than treating the symptoms. In severe cases, steroids such as corticosteroids may be used to control the swelling of the throat and tonsils. Currently, there are no antiviral drugs or vaccines available.

It is important to note that symptoms related to infectious mononucleosis caused by EBV infection seldom last for more than 4 months. When such an illness lasts more than 6 months, it is frequently called chronic EBV infection. However, valid laboratory evidence for continued active EBV infection is seldom found in these patients. The illness should be investigated further to determine if it meets the criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS. This process includes ruling out other causes of chronic illness or fatigue.

Infectious pathogen-associated diseases include many of the most common and costly chronic illnesses. The treatment of chronic diseases accounts for 75% of all US healthcare costs (amounting to $1.7 trillion in 2009).

A list of the more common and well-known diseases associated with infectious pathogens is provided and is not intended to be a complete listing.

The mainstay of eradication is the identification and removal of persistently infected animals. Re-infection is then prevented by vaccination and high levels of biosecurity, supported by continuing surveillance. PIs act as viral reservoirs and are the principal source of viral infection but transiently infected animals and contaminated fomites also play a significant role in transmission.

Leading the way in BVD eradication, almost 20 years ago, were the Scandinavian countries. Despite different conditions at the start of the projects in terms of legal support, and regardless of initial prevalence of herds with PI animals, it took all countries approximately 10 years to reach their final stages.

Once proven that BVD eradication could be achieved in a cost efficient way, a number of regional programmes followed in Europe, some of which have developed into national schemes.

Vaccination is an essential part of both control and eradication. While BVD virus is still circulating within the national herd, breeding cattle are at risk of producing PI neonates and the economic consequences of BVD are still relevant. Once eradication has been achieved, unvaccinated animals will represent a naïve and susceptible herd. Infection from imported animals or contaminated fomites brought into the farm, or via transiently infected in-contacts will have devastating consequences.

Avian infectious bronchitis (IB) is an acute and highly contagious respiratory disease of chickens. The disease is caused by avian infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), a coronavirus, and characterized by respiratory signs including gasping, coughing, sneezing, tracheal rales, and nasal discharge. In young chickens, severe respiratory distress may occur. In layers, respiratory distress, nephritis, decrease in egg production, and loss of internal (watery egg white) and external (fragile, soft, irregular or rough shells, shell-less) egg quality are reported.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) evolved from Methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) otherwise known as common "S. aureus". Many people are natural carriers of "S. aureus", without being affected in any way. MSSA was treatable with the antibiotic methicillin until it acquired the gene for antibiotic resistance. Though genetic mapping of various strains of MRSA, scientists have found that MSSA acquired the mecA gene in the 1960s, which accounts for its pathogenicity, before this it had a predominantly commensal relationship with humans. It is theorized that when this "S. aureus" strain that had acquired the mecA gene was introduced into hospitals, it came into contact with other hospital bacteria that had already been exposed to high levels of antibiotics. When exposed to such high levels of antibiotics, the hospital bacteria suddenly found themselves in an environment that had a high level of selection for antibiotic resistance, and thus resistance to multiple antibiotics formed within these hospital populations. When "S. aureus" came into contact with these populations, the multiple genes that code for antibiotic resistance to different drugs were then acquired by MRSA, making it nearly impossible to control. It is thought that MSSA acquired the resistance gene through the horizontal gene transfer, a method in which genetic information can be passed within a generation, and spread rapidly through its own population as was illustrated in multiple studies. Horizontal gene transfer speeds the process of genetic transfer since there is no need to wait an entire generation time for gene to be passed on. Since most antibiotics do not work on MRSA, physicians have to turn to alternative methods based in Darwinian medicine. However prevention is the most preferred method of avoiding antibiotic resistance. By reducing unnecessary antibiotic use in human and animal populations, antibiotics resistance can be slowed.

Modern vaccination programmes aim not only to provide a high level of protection from clinical disease for the dam, but, crucially, to protect against viraemia and prevent the production of PIs. While the immune mechanisms involved are the same, the level of immune protection required for foetal protection is much higher than for prevention of clinical disease.

While challenge studies indicate that killed, as well as live, vaccines prevent foetal infection under experimental conditions, the efficacy of vaccines under field conditions has been questioned. The birth of PI calves into vaccinated herds suggests that killed vaccines do not stand up to the challenge presented by the viral load excreted by a PI in the field.

Recent work has been done by virologists to learn more about the interference in infection of host cells and how DI genomes could potentially work as antiviral agents. The Dimmock & Easton, 2014 article explains that pre-clinical work is being done to test their effectiveness against influenza viruses. DI-RNAs have also been found to aid in the infection of fungi via viruses of the family "Partitiviridae" for the first time, which makes room for more interdisciplinary work.

Lesions of paravaccinia virus will clear up with little to no scaring after 4 to 8 weeks. An antibiotic may be prescribed by a physician to help prevent bacterial infection of the lesion area. In rare cases, surgical removal of the lesions can be done to help increase rate of healing, and help minimize risk of bacterial or fungal infection. Upon healing, no long term side effects have been reported.

Paravaccinia virus originates from livestock infected with bovine papular stomatitis. When a human makes physical contact with the livestock's muzzle, udders, or an infected area, the area of contact will become infected. Livestock may not show symptoms of bovine papular stomatitis and still be infected and contagious. Paravaccinia can enter the body though all pathways including: skin contact by mechanical means, through the respiratory tract, or orally. Oral or respiratory contraction may be more likely to cause systemic symptoms such as lesions across the whole body

A person who has not previously been infected with paravaccinia virus should avoid contact with infected livestock to prevent contraction of disease. There is no commercially available vaccination for cattle or humans against paravaccinia. However, following infection, immunization has been noted in humans, making re-infection difficult. Unlike other pox viruses, there is no record of contracting paravaccinia virus from another human. Further, cattle only show a short immunization after initial infection, providing opportunity to continue to infect more livestock and new human hosts.

One way of proving that a given disease is "infectious", is to satisfy Koch's postulates (first proposed by Robert Koch), which demands that the infectious agent be identified only in patients and not in healthy controls, and that patients who contract the agent also develop the disease. These postulates were first used in the discovery that Mycobacteria species cause tuberculosis. Koch's postulates can not be applied ethically for many human diseases because they require experimental infection of a healthy individual with a pathogen produced as a pure culture. Often, even clearly infectious diseases do not meet the infectious criteria. For example, "Treponema pallidum", the causative spirochete of syphilis, cannot be cultured "in vitro" – however the organism can be cultured in rabbit testes. It is less clear that a pure culture comes from an animal source serving as host than it is when derived from microbes derived from plate culture.

Epidemiology is another important tool used to study disease in a population. For infectious diseases it helps to determine if a disease outbreak is sporadic (occasional occurrence), endemic (regular cases often occurring in a region), epidemic (an unusually high number of cases in a region), or pandemic (a global epidemic).

Infection is the invasion of an organism's body tissues by disease-causing agents, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agents and the toxins they produce. Infectious disease, also known as transmissible disease or communicable disease, is illness resulting from an infection.

Infections are caused by infectious agents including viruses, viroids, prions, bacteria, nematodes such as parasitic roundworms and pinworms, arthropods such as ticks, mites, fleas, and lice, fungi such as ringworm, and other macroparasites such as tapeworms and other helminths.

Hosts can fight infections using their immune system. Mammalian hosts react to infections with an innate response, often involving inflammation, followed by an adaptive response.

Specific medications used to treat infections include antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, antiprotozoals, and antihelminthics. Infectious diseases resulted in 9.2 million deaths in 2013 (about 17% of all deaths). The branch of medicine that focuses on infections is referred to as infectious disease.

Bovine malignant catarrhal fever (BMCF) is a fatal lymphoproliferative disease caused by a group of ruminant gamma herpes viruses including Alcelaphine gammaherpesvirus 1 (AlHV-1) and Ovine gammaherpesvirus 2 (OvHV-2) These viruses cause unapparent infection in their reservoir hosts (sheep with OvHV-2 and wildebeest with AlHV-1), but are usually fatal in cattle and other ungulates such as deer, antelope, and buffalo.

BMCF is an important disease where reservoir and susceptible animals mix. There is a particular problem with Bali cattle in Indonesia, bison in the US and in pastoralist herds in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Disease outbreaks in cattle are usually sporadic although infection of up to 40% of a herd has been reported. The reasons for this are unknown. Some species appear to be particularly susceptible, for example Pére Davids deer, Bali cattle and bison, with many deer dying within 48 hours of the appearance of the first symptoms and bison within three days. In contrast, post infection cattle will usually survive a week or more.

The term "bovine malignant catarrhal fever" has been applied to three different patterns of disease:

- In Africa, wildebeests carry a lifelong infection of AlHV-1 but are not affected by the disease. The virus is passed from mother to offspring and shed mostly in the nasal secretions of wildebeest calves under one year old. Wildebeest associated MCF is transmitted from wildebeest to cattle normally following the wildebeest calving period. Cattle of all ages are susceptible to the disease, with a higher infection rate in adults, particularly in peripartuent females. Cattle are infected by contact with the secretions, but do not spread the disease to other cattle. Because no commercial treatment or vaccine is available for this disease, livestock management is the only method of control. This involves keeping cattle away from wildebeest during the critical calving period. This results in Massai pastoralists in Tanzania and Kenya being excluded from prime pasture grazing land during the wet season leading to a loss in productivity. In Eastern and Southern Africa MCF is classed as one of the five most important problems affecting pastoralists along with East coast fever, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, foot and mouth disease and anthrax.Hartebeests and topi also may carry the disease. However, hartebeests and other antelopes are infected by a variant, Alcelaphine herpesvirus 2.

- Throughout the rest of the world, cattle and deer contract BMCF by close contact with sheep or goats during lambing. The natural host reservoir for Ovine herpesvirus 2 is the subfamily Caprinae (sheep and goats) whilst MCF affected animals are from the families Bovidae, Cervidae and suidae. Susceptibility to OHV-2 varies by species, with domestic cattle and zebus somewhat resistant, water buffalo and most deer somewhat susceptible, and bison, Bali cattle, and Pere David's deer very susceptible. OHV-2 viral DNA has been detected in the alimentary, respiratory and urino-genital tracts of sheep all of which could be possible transmission routes. Antibody from sheep and from cattle with BMCF is cross reactive with AlHV-1.

- AHV-1/OHV-2 can also cause problems in zoological collections, where inapparently infected hosts (wildebeest and sheep) and susceptible hosts are often kept in close proximity.

- Feedlot bison in North America not in contact with sheep have also been diagnosed with a form of BMCF. OHV-2 has been recently documented to infect herds of up to 5 km away from the nearest lambs, with the levels of infected animals proportional to the distance away from the closest herds of sheep.

The incubation period of BMCF is not known, however intranasal challenge with AHV-1 induced MCF in one hundred percent of challenged cattle between 2.5 and 6 weeks.

Shedding of the virus is greater from 6–9 month old lambs than from adults. After experimental infection of sheep, there is limited viral replication in nasal cavity in the first 24 hours after infection, followed by later viral replication in other tissues.

Symptoms of infectious mononucleosis are fever, sore throat, and swollen lymph glands. Sometimes, a swollen spleen or liver involvement may develop. Heart problems or involvement of the central nervous system occurs only rarely, and infectious mononucleosis is almost never fatal. There are no known associations between active EBV infection and problems during pregnancy, such as miscarriages or birth defects. Although the symptoms of infectious mononucleosis usually resolve in 1 or 2 months, EBV remains dormant or latent in a few cells in the throat and blood for the rest of the person's life. Periodically, the virus can reactivate and is commonly found in the saliva of infected persons. Reactivated and post-latent virus may pass the placental barrier in (also seropositive) pregnant women via macrophages and therefore can infect the fetus. Also re-infection of prior seropositive individuals may occur. In contrast, reactivation in adults usually occurs without symptoms of illness.

EBV also establishes a lifelong dormant infection in some cells of the body's immune system. A late event in a very few carriers of this virus is the emergence of Burkitt's lymphoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma, two rare cancers. EBV appears to play an important role in these malignancies, but is probably not the sole cause of disease.

Most individuals exposed to people with infectious mononucleosis have previously been infected with EBV and are not at risk for infectious mononucleosis. In addition, transmission of EBV requires intimate contact with the saliva (found in the mouth) of an infected person. Transmission of this virus through the air or blood does not normally occur. The incubation period, or the time from infection to appearance of symptoms, ranges from 4 to 6 weeks. Persons with infectious mononucleosis may be able to spread the infection to others for a period of weeks. However, no special precautions or isolation procedures are recommended, since the virus is also found frequently in the saliva of healthy people. In fact, many healthy people can carry and spread the virus intermittently for life. These people are usually the primary reservoir for person-to-person transmission. For this reason, transmission of the virus is almost impossible to prevent.

The clinical diagnosis of infectious mononucleosis is suggested on the basis of the symptoms of fever, sore throat, swollen lymph glands, and the age of the patient. Usually, laboratory tests are needed for confirmation. Serologic results for persons with infectious mononucleosis include an elevated white blood cell count, an increased percentage of certain atypical white blood cells, and a positive reaction to a "mono spot" test.

In the absence of vaccination (often because calves are bought unvaccinated), antibiotics can help to stop the bacterial factors of the disease. The Virginia Cooperative Extension recommends Micotil, Nuflor, and Baytril 100 as newer antibiotics that do not need daily dosing, but also notes that Naxcel, Excenel, and Adspec are effective as well.

Vaccinations exist for several biological BRD precursors, but the multitude of possible precursors complicates the process of choosing a vaccine regime. Additionally, vaccines are not completely effective in stopping the disease, but are merely helpful in mitigation. Many of the problems with vaccine effectiveness rest with improper use, such as failing to time vaccine doses appropriately, or not administering them before shipping.

Vaccines are available for a number of viral/bacterial agents, including IBR, PI3, BVD, BRSV, Pasteurella, and "Haemophilus somnus". Many of these vaccines can be given simultaneously, because of their similar dosing schedule. For example, IBR, PI3, BVD, and BRSV vaccines are often sold in combination with each other.

Shade, insect repellent-impregnated ear tags, and lower stocking rates may help prevent IBK. Early identification of the disease also helps prevent spread throughout the herd. Treatment is with early systemic use of a long-acting antibiotic such as tetracycline or florfenicol. Subconjunctival injections with procaine penicillin or other antibiotics are also effective, providing a "bubble" of antibiotic which releases into the eye slowly over several days.

Anti-inflammatory therapy can help shorten recovery times, but topical corticosteroids should be used with care if corneal ulcers are present.

"M. bovis" uses several different serotyped fimbriae as virulence factors, consequently pharmaceutical companies have exploited this to create vaccines. However, currently available vaccines are not reliable.

In virology, defective interfering particles (DIPs), also known as defective interfering viruses, are spontaneously generated virus mutants in which a critical portion of the particle's genome has been lost due to defective replication. DIPs are derived from and associated with their parent virus, and particles are classed as DIPs if they are rendered non-infectious due to at least one essential gene of the virus being lost or severely damaged as a result of the defection. A DIP can usually still penetrate host cells, but requires another fully functional virus particle (the 'helper' virus) to co-infect a cell with it, in order to provide the lost factors. The existence of DIPs has been known about for decades, and they can occur within nearly every class of both DNA and RNA viruses.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes a journal "Emerging Infectious Diseases" that identifies the following factors contributing to disease emergence:

- Microbial adaption; e.g. genetic drift and genetic shift in Influenza A

- Changing human susceptibility; e.g. mass immunocompromisation with HIV/AIDS

- Climate and weather; e.g. diseases with zoonotic vectors such as West Nile Disease (transmitted by mosquitoes) are moving further from the tropics as the climate warms

- Change in human demographics and trade; e.g. rapid travel enabled SARS to rapidly propagate around the globe

- Economic development; e.g. use of antibiotics to increase meat yield of farmed cows leads to antibiotic resistance

- Breakdown of public health; e.g. the current situation in Zimbabwe

- Poverty and social inequality; e.g. tuberculosis is primarily a problem in low-income areas

- War and famine

- Bioterrorism; e.g. 2001 Anthrax attacks

- Dam and irrigation system construction; e.g. malaria and other mosquito borne diseases

Coopers Animal Health , a division of Schering-Plough, has released a new vaccine "Piliguard" in Australia. The vaccine contains three strains of "Morexella bovis" (SAH38, FLA 64, EPP 63) pilli antigen. This stimulate antibody production against the bacterial pilli to prevent their attachment and invasion of the conjuntiva. The company claims the vaccine reduces the incidence and severity of the disease in an individual animal which directly reduces animal suffering and production loss on top of limiting the spread of disease through the herd. This, in turn, reduces the amount of antibioitcs and fly repellent needed during high-risk seasons. The vaccine is marketed in multidose vials and has an adjuvant to create a long-term subcutaneous depot. This means no booster shot is necessary, but severe local reaction can be seen in people who accidentally inoculate themselves. Calves as young as one week old can be treated and no meat, milk, or export slaughter withdrawal is needed.

Outbreaks of zoonoses have been traced to human interaction with and exposure to animals at fairs, petting zoos, and other settings. In 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an updated list of recommendations for preventing zoonosis transmission in public settings. The recommendations, developed in conjunction with the National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians, include educational responsibilities of venue operators, limiting public and animal contact, and animal care and management.