The quality or degree to which an organism or substance can cause disease or damage to cells.
From 'cytopathogenic' + '-ity' (a suffix forming abstract nouns meaning 'state or condition'). This creates a noun form describing the property of being cell-damaging.
Researchers measure cytopathogenicity to compare how nasty different viruses are—a highly cytopathogenic virus might kill cells within hours, while a weakly cytopathogenic one barely damages them, which can affect whether someone gets very sick or hardly notices the infection.
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