Emerging Infectious Diseases are diseases that are new, re-emerging, or drug-resistant and the incidence in humans has increased within the past two decades or whose incidence threatens to increase in the near future. Factors that contribute to the emergence of new infectious diseases are microbial adaptation and change, widespread usage of antibiotics, economic development and land use, international travel and commerce, human demographics and behavior, and technology and industry. One emerging infectious disease that has been re-emerging is the West Nile Virus.
Disease and Pathology
West Nile virus is an emerging infectious disease because it keeps re-emerging; showing an increase in incidence and it has spread to different geographic areas by modern transportation. This virus was first identified in 1937 in Uganda, Africa and it has existed in Africa and the Middle East for decades, if not centuries. But in 1999, it landed in Queens, New York, via an unknown route. The infection then proceeded to move across the country and since then has spread to 48 states, Canada, Mexico, and many other countries.
Encephalitis is a severe symptom and the most common symptom in hospitalized West Nile Virus patients, affecting 50% to 84% of patients; it manifests with behavioral or personality changes such as irritability, confusion, or disorientation that can evolve into stupor and even a coma, with mental status changes persisting for up to several weeks. Although very serious symptoms rarely occur in infected people, about 20% of infected people do have milder symptoms, which include, fever, headache, body aches, nausea, vomiting and sometimes swollen lymph glands. The majority (80%) of infected people have no symptoms. Symptoms of W...
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...previous years. In 2010 the virus was more prevalent in Greece, the Russian Federation, and Romania.
Works Cited
1. Arabians, Jamal . "Symptoms of West Nile Virus." AutoFly Spray Systems. 2011. 10 Apr. 2011. .
2. Dugdale, David C. West Nile Virus. 18 Mar. 2011. .
3. "Flavivirus." Wikipedia. 14 Apr. 2011. .
4. "Flaviviruses Fact Sheet." Noth Dakota Department of Health. 11 Apr. 2011. .
5. Tortura, Gerard, and Berdell Funke, and Christine Case. Microbiology. Benjamin Cummings, 2009.
6. "West Nile Virus Homepage." Center for Disease Control and Prevention. 17 Mar. 2011. .
Chester M. Southam, MD, was an American virologist who worked on curing cancer. “Studies had shown that a pathogen called the Russian spring-summer encephalitis virus could eradicate tumors in mice. Because that virus was considered too dangerous for people, Southam searched for something milder, settling on the newly discovered West Nile virus.” He had already spent some time in Africa injecting an assortment of viruses including mumps, dengue, West Nile, and Semliki Forest virus in severely ill cancer patients. The West Nile Virus usually
the bubonic plague. Like the bubonic plague did in the Middle Ages, AIDS is spreading at an alarming rate. In 1994 seventeen million people around the world were
Almost no one on Earth has any immunity at all to this virus, which makes ordinary vaccines useless against it. The sudden spread of the virus into Europe foreshadows an epidemic development that could be worldwide. Ultimately, there is no way to protect ourselves against epidemics. They will keep disappearing and coming back in new forms.
An animal infected with CWD will have neural loss, astrogliosis, which is an abnormal increase in the number of astrocytes in the brain, and spongiform lesions (Abrams et al., 2011). The infected particles are spread all throughout the body including the brain, spinal cord, eyes, peripheral nerves, and lymphoreticular tissues (Belay et al., 2004). Most of the infection, however, is located in the Central Nervous System.
Mosquitoes, fever and even death may be some of the things that come to mind when we're asked to think about West Nile Virus. Many of us would consider mosquitoes a small trade-off for what the summertime provides, but what if there were more at risk than a bump above your skin and an itch? In a not so distant past West Nile Virus ascended into news broadcasts all throughout the country and alarming it's residents. Today however, that all seems to be an afterthought. The intentions today are to cover the first found cases of West Nile Virus, the symptoms of West Nile Virus, and finally West Nile Virus' impact on the United States. Through the research here, the hope is that we can all have a better understanding of how West Nile Virus works.
is spread to humans by fleas from infected rodents. In the 1300s, fourth of the population
Infectious diseases are the disorders caused by organisms such as bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasite who live both inside and outside our bodies and are normally helpful but can cause infectious diseases to the human (body) system under certain conditions. And for a disease to be infectious, there is what is called ‘’chain of infection’’ that takes place before. And this can be seen in the below diagram:
After the death of Charles Monet, the stage is set for much more to come. At the time, Monet’s death was considered unknown, because the Ebola virus was not known about at the time. Medication and antibiotics have no effect on someone with the virus, so obviously it’s pretty serious. Ebola is probably one of the most disgusting things anyone could ever imagine. What is basically does is turn your internal organs into liquid that then pours out of every single hole in your body, even the pores in your skin. Another effect of this virus is coughing up your own blood. This happens because the blood clots in your arteries and veins, which forces it to come out of your mouth and other areas. Eventually your skin will just explode from the pressure of all the blood built up in-between your skin and flesh. This virus can be very deceiving because it has the regular symptoms of diseases like malaria and typhoid fever, but it can kill you within a matter of 10 days.
The human population has a high susceptibility to the contraction of new diseases and outbreaks of these diseases are of high risk. Diseases in recent times that have broken out into the human population are the H7N9 flu strain and SARS. Despite the risk, outbreaks like H7N9 and SARS have been controlled due to epidemiology and other disease control methods. Outbreaks of disease are not uncommon to the human population as they move to new areas around the world with foreign diseases that the native residents would have developed a resistance to.
Throughout history many different diseases have infected the world. Such diseases consist of measles, mumps, malaria, typhus and yellow fever. Many of these diseases are caused by different things and originated in different countries.
Thesis Statement: The deadly virus Ebola is killing thousands of innocent people world wide, but there are some simple steps that are being taken to prevent this coming tide of death.
One of the current major concerns in the world is the outbreak of Ebola. Ebola is an infectious disease that comes from the Ebola virus and can cause death if the patient is left untreated. The disease can be managed with treatment of the patient, however. Ebola is a disease that is a major concern in the Subsaharan African Realm, and in the North American Realm, but it is beginning to be dealt with sufficiently in the Northern American Realm. Ebola started its first outbreak in West Africa.
In the 1960s, doctors in the United States predicted that infectious diseases were in decline. US surgeon Dr. William H. Stewart told the nation that it had already seen most of the frontiers in the field of contagious disease. Epidemiology seemed destined to become a scientific backwater (Karlen 1995, 3). Although people thought that this particular field was gradually dying, it wasn’t. A lot more of it was destined to come. By the late 1980s, it became clear that people’s initial belief of infectious diseases declining needed to be qualified, as a host of new diseases emerged to infect human beings (Smallman & Brown, 2011).With the current trends, the epidemics and pandemics we have faced have created a very chaotic and unreliable future for mankind. As of today, it has really been difficult to prevent global epidemics and pandemics. Although the cases may be different from one state to another, the challenges we all face are all interconnected in this globalized world.
Geoffrey Garnet and Edward C. Holmes. “The Ecology of Emerging Infectious Disease.” Bioscience. Vol. 46 Issue 2 (1996).
Dengue fever, also known as the “breakbone fever”, is a vector-borne viral disease endemic in tropic and subtropic regions, with around 100 million symptomatic new cases each year worldwide15. It is caused by any one of the four closely-related serotypes or viruses that is spread by multiple species of mosquitoes, in particular the Aedes aegypti 6,13.