Introduction
Not many people in the United States have come in contact with a disease called Leishmaniasis; however, in southern Europe and the tropics of the world this disease is a force to be reckoned with. Leishmania spp., also known more commonly as cutaneous leishmaniasis and visceral leishmaniasis, is a bacterium causing a parasitic disease either on the surface of the skin or within the body in internal organs. An experiment was conducted to see if leishmaniasis should be included in the CDC clinical category C for the definition of AIDS.
Background
Leishmania spp. belongs to the archaebacteria and eubacteria kingdom. It is a bacterium causing a parasitic disease found in the tropics, subtropics, and southern Europe and rarely ever found in the United States (Parasites - Leishmaniasis). It is prokaryotic and unicellular. Its energy source comes from synthesizing and consuming its own energy from sunlight, inorganic and organic compounds, and also autotrophs and heterotrophs. It is asexual and can use binary fission for reproduction. Since it is a parasite it attacks other organisms as well as using a chemical defense. The bacteria can live and survive in harsh environments with or without any oxygen. There is a cell wall present. Leishmaniasis is caused by infection with Leishmania parasites, which are spread by the bite of infected sand flies (Parasites - Leishmaniasis). The most common forms are cutaneous leishmaniasis and visceral leishmaniasis. Cutaneous causes skin sores whereas visceral affects several internal organs, including the spleen, liver, and bone marrow (Parasites - Leishmaniasis). Cutaneous can sometimes be a silent infection, without any symptoms or signs. People who develop clinical evide...
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...ate stages of the HIV virus, as proven by the case study and the results figure. Visceral leishmaniasis in the HIV-infected population should be included in the CDC clinical category C for the definition of AIDS.
Works Cited
Parasites - Leishmaniasis. (2013, January 10). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved February 3, 2014, from http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/leishmaniasis/
Pasquau, F., Ena, J., Sanchez, R., Cuadrado, J., & Amador, C. (2005). Leishmaniasis as an opportunistic infection in HIV-infected patients: determinants of relapse and mortality in a collaborative study of 228 episodes in a Mediterreanean region. European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, 24(6), 411-418. Retrieved February 5, 2014, from http://search.proquest.com.pallas2.tcl.sc.edu/biologicalsciences/docview/849110844/E9FD10EC88D74913PQ/4?accountid=13965
On the second day of class, the Professor Judit Kerekes developed a short chart of the Xmania system and briefly explained how students would experience a number problem. Professor Kerekes invented letters to name the quantities such as “A” for one box, “B” for two boxes. “C” is for three boxes, “D” is for four boxes and “E” is for five boxes. This chart confused me because I wasn’t too familiar with this system. One thing that generated a lot of excitement for me was when she used huge foam blocks shaped as dice. A student threw two blocks across the room and identified the symbol “0”, “A”, “B”, “C”, “D”, and “E.” To everyone’s amazement, we had fun practicing the Xmania system and learned as each table took turns trying to work out problems.
the definition of parasite, is something that hurts. for ever. this parasite, was a landmine. I had good medical attention. But once i returned home, I finally left. I wanted to leave. there were rockets, raining down in every place i looked. those rockets stole my family. we couldn't stay. so we fled. the last time i had a true education, was when i entered high school. between 2nd grade and 9th the education i had in my birth place, that wasn't any kind of education. i wanted more. and there was nothing there for me to want
Ever wonder what kind of parasites are in your water, or how they can enter in to your body to make you very sick? Well it is most definite that no on want to get sick. The information found in this paper was collected over the past month, either by going to the library or by accessing information off the Internet at home, almost every night. The point that will be given to you is a little in information about the infectious disease called Schistosomiasis. The points the main points will be the causative agents, symptoms, hosts, methods of transmission and history of the disease. So lets see what Schistosomiasis is.
“Plague Fact Sheet.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Department of Health and Human Services. 30 March, 2005. 26 July, 2006. .
Treponema pallidum is a Gram-negative bacterium that has a spiral shape (1). They are about 6 to 20um in length and 18-20um in diameter (1). Treponema pallidum can only survive within a host which makes them obligate internal parasites, meaning that outside a host this organism will die due to the absence of nutrients, exposure to oxygen and heat. Also since this organism can’t be grown on a culture medium, animal models are used to study T. pallidum (1). Treponema pallidum bacteria consist of an inner and outer membrane with a thin peptidoglycan cell wall lacking liposaccharides (1). They have a distinctive corkscrew motility with the aid of 6 endoflagellas (2). The specific classifications of Treponema pallidum are the following: Scientific name- Treponema pallidum, Common name- Syphilis. Treponema causes syphilis, yaws, and spinta. Borrelia causes Lyme disease and relapsing fever and Leptospira causing leptospirosis (5). What makes this microorganism special to the human population is that it causes infection to its host by entering the body through microscopic skin or mucous abrasions via direct personal contact with the lesions (sexual or kissing), blood transfusions, accidental bacterial inoculation, and transplacental passage (2). According to the CDC website there are 55,400 people diagnosed with Syphilis every year and 322 reported cases of congenital Syphilis in 2012 (6).
Disease and parasitism play a pervasive role in all life. Many of these diseases start with microparasites, which are characterized by their ability to reproduce directly within an individual host. They are also characterized by their small size, short duration of infection, and the production of an immune response in infected and recovered individuals. Microparasites which damage hosts in the course of their association are recognized as pathogens. The level of the interaction and the extent of the resultant damage depends on both the virulence of the pathogen, as well as the host defenses.
Being a gram-negative bacterium, L. pneumophila has lipopolysaccharides (LPS) that act as endotoxin within a human host. The presence of a flagella is thought to mediate adherence to human lung cells, thereby causing infection, since flagella-less strains do not cause disease. Once attached to human cells, the organism is engulfed by a macrophage where is utilizes the internal environment to multiply.
Merriam-Webster defines ‘parasite’ as ‘an organism that lives in or on another organism and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host 's expense’.
It has been written about, debated over, and has affected every culture it has come into contact with. One can only be amazed when examining the microscopic syphilis bacterium. It traveled the seas of 1492 with Columbus, fought alongside Hitler in the war of the worlds, and gambled with the likes of Al Capone. 2 This bacterium has been a part of hundreds of year’s worth of human history, and probably thousands of year’s worth of prehistory. Technology has enabled us to sequence the genome of syphilis, exposing every possible characteristic and genomic code function, yet no one knows where the bacterium calls home. Syphilis has revolutionized western medicine and our approach to public health, yet no vaccine has been developed. It is a mystery how historical evidence has shown the symptoms of the disease since the beginning of mankind, yet outbreaks still occur in modern time. By understanding the theories of origin, the morphological, genomic, and relative characteristics of the disease and its treatment, the riddle of this disease may be cracked in the near future.
The history of Syphilis itself is one tangled and wrapped up in the histories of other diseases, social movements, and sciences. To...
This parasite is spread through the bite of sandflies. There are three different types of infections and they each show varying degrees of severity. The cutaneous form produces mild skin ulcers, mucocutaneous produces ulcers in the mouth and nose, and the visceral form of the disease starts with skin ulcers and then fever, low red blood cell count, and an enlarged spleen and liver. The parasite is detected by a microscope and visceral can also be found by doing blood tests. 12 million people are in infected in 98 different countries and 2 million new cases are found every year. The disease also kills around 20 to 50 thousand people a year.
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized as a new disease in 1981 when increasing numbers of young homosexual men succumbed to unusual opportunistic infections and rare malignancies (Gallant49).During this time, many people were contacting this disease because it was not discovered yet and people did not have knowledge about it.Scientists believe HIV came from a particular kind of chimpanzee in Western Africa. Humans contracted this disease when they hunted and ate infected animals. A first clue came in 1986 when a morphologically similar but antigenically distinct virus was found to cause AIDS in patients in western Africa (Goosby24). During this time, scientists had more evidence to support their claim about this disease. Once discovered this disease was identified as a cause of what has since become one of the most devastating infectious diseases to have emerged in recent history (Goosby101). This disease was deadly because it was similar to the Black Death, it was killing majority of the population. Since its first identification almost three decades ago, the pandemic form of HIV-1 has infected at least 60 million people and caused more than 25 million deaths ...
"Tuberculosis (TB)." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 13 Mar. 2012. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
one in which the host animal can live for a long enough time for the parasite to
Stine, Gerald James. AIDS Update 2012: An Annual Overview of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print.