A virus affects, attacks, or infects? What is the correct collocation?

By Josue Contreras

In this article, I will talk about the collocation formed by the noun virus and three verbs
(affect, attack, and infect) that usually go together with this word.

Sometimes there is more than one verb that can go with a noun. In linguistics, a pair or group
of words that are habitually juxtaposed are called collocations. These juxtapositions are
common in any field of knowledge. In this case, the fields related to the topic of the article
are microbiology and medicine.

As you already know, a virus is a microscopic infectious agent that is capable of growth and
multiplication only in living cells, and that causes various important diseases in humans,
animals, and plants.

Some of the most dangerous and mortal diseases are caused by viruses such as HIV/AIDS,
smallpox, Ebola, etc. In this context, experts try to use verbs that express the characteristics
and effects of the disease caused by the virus. The problem arises when there are many
options of verbs that we can use and we do not know exactly when or how to use them.

Now, let’s try to clarify some of these doubts, focusing on the following verbs used with the
term virus.

1. Affect

Using the Context section of the WriteBetter Online Editor, we got the following results with
the collocation “virus affects.”
Let’s analyse some examples taken from the editor:

- The HIV virus affects the human immune system and eventually leads to Acquired
Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
- The herpes simplex virus affects the frontal and temporal lobes, subcortical
structures, and the hippocampal tissue, which can trigger aphasia.
- Background Influenza virus affects millions of people worldwide each year.
- Abstract Background Hepatitis C Virus (HCV), a single stranded RNA virus, affects
millions of people worldwide.
- Papillomaviruses are ubiquitous DNA viruses affecting humans and animals and
causing a variety of tumours of mucosal and cutaneous epithelia.

The first two examples show that the collocation virus – affect is used to point out specific
parts, organs, and systems of an organism (host) modified by the action of the virus and also
the diseases caused by this agent.
The last three examples show that the collocation is used to touch on the species or target
population of the virus and it also mentions the health problems caused.

2. Attack

Let’s continue with the collocation virus – attack and let’s try to find the similarities or
differences with the previous examples.

The search produced the following results.

Examples taken from WriteBetter:

- HIV- 1 infection is a particular and interesting scenario, because the virus attacks
cells of the immune system that have a role in the antibody production.
- MCF virus attacks the blood vessels in multiple organs so clinical signs can be quite
variable.
- The virus attacks brain astrocytes and neurons directly or indirectly by activation of
macrophages.
- Rhabdoviridae family viruses attacking the plant hosts were only described at the
angiosperms.
 - Herpetic viruses that attack fish are ones of the most widespread virus pathogens,
threatening modern day fish population.

After analysing the contexts taken from the software, we realize that these focus on the
specific part of the body of a host and also the target population or species of the virus. So,
we can observe a slight difference from the previous collocation.

3. Infect

Concerning the use of the collocation virus – infect, the image below illustrates the search
on the WriteBeter software.

These are some of the examples taken from the software:

- Influenza A virus infects many species, and amantadine is used as an antiviral agent.
- The virus infects sheep subclinically but when it is transmitted to cattle; it induces
malignant catarrhal fever (MCF), a frequently fatal lymphoproliferative disease.
- This virus infects human primarily via Aeges mosquitoes as the transmission vector.
 - The virus infects and destroys CD 4 + T-cells thereby crippling the immune system,
and causing an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
- Our results demonstrate that the H 1 N 1 v virus infects alveolar epithelial cells and
causes diffuse alveolar damage in a nonhuman primate model.

After analysing the contexts taken from the WriteBetter software, we see that the collocation
virus – infect is mainly used to point out the population, species, and cells that usually are
the target of a virus. The examples also mention the effects caused by the presence of the
virus.

Summing up, the three collocations analysed present slight differences. On the one hand, the
context of use is the same for all the examples and, on the other hand, is the object of the
verb that presents some differences. While the three collocations can point out the species
and parts of the body that are the target of viruses, not all of them focus on the effects caused
by these microscopic agents. Taking this into account, the three verbs can be used with the
noun virus, but they are not one hundred percent interchangeable.