Exaltation refers to:

Exaltation refers to enhancement of virulence 1. Virulence - Measure of a microbe's ability to cause disease. Quantitative measure of pathogenicity Highly virulent microbe requires fewer organisms to cause disease than a less virulent one; hence it is directly dependent on the infectious dose of the organism. 2. The virulence of a strain is not constant and may undergo spontaneous or induced variations. Attenuation - Reduction in virulence & can be achieved experimentally by passage through unorable hosts, repeated cultures in aificial media, growth in high temperature or in the presence of weak antiseptics or prolonged storage in culture. Exaltation - Enhancement of virulence & can be demonstrated experimentally by serial passage in susceptible host