Meningitis

1541 Words4 Pages

Meningitis

Meningitis is a disease that attacks the meninges. It travels around the body in order to reach these protective layers. It then lives in the cerebrospinal fluid. It attacks the body’s phages, therefore, placing stress on the brain. Not only does the bacteria attack the body, the stress causes a variety of conditions, most of which are related to hearing deficiencies. Meningitis attacks many different parts of the world both in the distant past and in recent years. The most common place for the four epidemic-causing serogroups of Neisseria meningitidis to attack is in the Meningitis Belt in sub-Saharan Africa.

Meningitis is a well-known disease among people; however, there are many confusing aspects about it. Many people do not truly understand what meningitis is, what is does, or how it causes so many devastating symptoms. To most people, meningitis is that disease that occurs every once in a while in little kids or old folk. However, what many do not know is that meningitis causes epidemics. There is at least one epidemic every few years somewhere in the world. Meningitis is a very dangerous disease that has been followed by and researched for years to understand these aspects. It is about time the public learned about meningitis, and essays like these are how they get informed.

The bacteria and viruses that cause meningitis have a pretty specific method by which they attack the human body. They have to find a way into the meninges, or the protective layers between the brain and the skull. They include the pia mater, the arachnoid, and the dura mater. The bacteria and/or viruses enter the bloodstream around the body (“Neuropathology” 6). Through complex interactions with the endothelial cells, they travel to the ...

... middle of paper ...

...r every year, all over the world, though mostly in the Meningitis Belt in Africa. With all these cases of meningitis going around, it is fairly contagious and very deadly. With this knowledge, the public can better protect itself from this dangerous disease and hopefully eradicate it in the near future.

6

Bibliography

“Chapter Five: Infections of the Nervous System”. Jan 2007. Neuropathology. 20 Jul 2008.

Cunha, Burke A. The Diagnosis and Therapy of Acute Bacterial Meningitis. Ed. Schlossberg, David. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990.

“Infections: Meningitis”. Sep 2007. Hirsch, Larissa, M.D. 13 Jul 2008.

“Meningococcal meningitis”. May 2003. World Health Organization. 13 Jul 2008.

Show More
Related

  • Sepsis Case Study

    1281 Words  | 3 Pages

    Antimicrobial therapy is the cornerstone sepsis treatment, and the therapeutic goal should be centered around administration of effective IV antibiotics within 60 minutes of septic shock or severe sepsis (without shock) recognition. The initial antimicrobial therapy should be empiric and focused on having activity against all expected pathogens (bacterial, fungal, viral), based on each individual patient situation. Daily reassessment of antimicrobial therapy should be performed, with de escalation in mind; procalcitonin levels can be of use to direct discontinuation in patients with no evidence of infection following initial septic

    Read More

  • Bordetella Pertussis or Whooping Cough

    1090 Words  | 3 Pages

    Whooping cough is a highly contagious and acute respiratory disease caused by an aerobic Gram negative encapsulated coco-bacillus bacterium, Bordetella pertussis. It is a strict human pathogen with no known animal or environmental reservoirs and an air-borne disease. On inhalation, Bordetella pertussis colonizes the ciliated cells of the bronchio-epithelium to cause disease characterised by; epithelial damage, hyper mucus secretion, pulmonary edema and paroxysmal coughing. It is often accompanied by pneumonia, otitis edema, seizures, post-tussive vomiting and encephalopathy (1).

    Read More

  • Overview of the Herpes Virus

    1256 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...nd make people aware that it is more common than people realize and that a rather large part of America has the illness, whether they know it or not. This paper also discussed how the virus, could target certain individuals more easily than others based on the genetic makeup of an individual and families.

    Read More

  • Plagues And Peoples Chapter Summary

    1646 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Rasmussens Encephalitis

    1181 Words  | 3 Pages

    The human immune system is an amazing system that is constantly on the alert protecting us from

    Read More

  • The 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic

    2713 Words  | 6 Pages

    ”2 Although business was booming for these professions, it was not because of the war. It was the result of an unexpected killer that swept across the world, claiming victims at an unprecedented rate. The 1918-1919 influenza pandemic stretched its lethal tentacles all over the globe, even to the most remote areas of the planet, killing fifty million people or possibly even more. Influenza killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century, and it killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years.3 Influenza normally kills the elderly and infants, but this deadly and abnormal strand claimed young people, those in their twenties or thirties as its target victims.

    Read More

  • Treating and Preventing Meningitis and Encephalitis

    1541 Words  | 4 Pages

    Due to its tendency to be both a viral and bacterial disease, meningitis can prove difficult to treat. Its dual tendencies also mean that various methods are used to attack the disease. In order to treat meningitis, different aspects of the disease must be discovered first. The type of organism causing the infection, the age of the patient, and the extent of the infection must all be taken into account (WebMD, sec. 8). Any time meningitis is found, immediate treatment with antibiotics is required, and continuation of antibiotic treatment depends on whether a bacteria or a virus is causing th...

    Read More

  • influenza

    1015 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout 1918 and 1919, influenza spread quickly in three waves killing an estimated 50 million to 100 million people worldwide. With the best-recorded first case having occurred in Fort Riley, the contagious flu spread across military camps around the United States. Due to the world war, the influenza virus was brought over to Europe where it infected people in nearly every country. This disease would end up causing one of the greatest pandemics in human history, but would also catalyze great advancements in science and medicine.

    Read More

  • Poliomyelitis Essay

    1144 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... presented by the diagram on the side. In this diagram some countries in Asia, Africa and South America have coverage of less than 89% of infants immunised. Two African countries, Somalia and Central African Republic have a rate of below 50%. The disease could also be prevented from re-emerging in countries where it has been eradicated by thoroughly promoting personal and environmental hygiene. The disease can also be eradicated in the other 3 countries by educating parents in rural areas about vaccinations and good hygiene as the disease is mainly spread through faeces

    Read More

  • Essay On Meningitis

    550 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout history there have been very dangerous diseases that have been able to single handedly wipe out entire civilizations because there was nothing that we could do about it. Most of the time was because we did not quite understand what was actually happening. But thanks to all of the scientific advancements humans are able to live many more times than previous years. But that doesn’t meant that every human is healthy enough. This means that although we are less prone to die from some infectious diseases, we now have other risk for example not keeping up with a healthy diet is one of the many reasons why there are so many premature deaths. Now if you don’t get treated right away it can get worst the longer you get and sometimes it can also be fatal. One of those is Meningitis which is something very serious that if it doesn’t get treated it can lead to very serious complications in the long run or even death depending on the case. The reason why I chose this one was because when I was in high school I suffered from some...

    Read More

  • Bursitis

    509 Words  | 2 Pages

    Bursitis Does it hurt to move your arm? Is it tender and radiating pain to your neck and finger tips? Do you have a fever? If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, then you may have a typical joint injury called bursitis. Bursitis is an inflammation of the bursa that is easily prevented, detected, and treated.

    Read More

  • The Flu

    1097 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Flu is the common name influenza which is a virus that attacks the respiratory system. The flu virus releases its genetic information into the cells nucleus to replicate itself. When the cell dies, those copies are released and they affect other cells throughout the rest of the body. With that happening the virus weakens the immune system. When your sick with the flu, your body builds up a defense by making antibodies against it. The flu virus spreads through air when a person coughs, sneezes, or speaks.

    Read More

  • The Discovery of Antibiotics by Alexander Fleming

    3182 Words  | 7 Pages

    The emergence of Penicillin marked the dawn of the antibiotic era and allowed for diseases which normally ended in death or dysfunction to be eliminated and for people to carry on living healthy lives. It is estimated that 90% of children who had meningitis of the bacterial kind in the pre-antibiotic era would either die or survive the illness with a physical impairment. Strep throat, whooping cough, tuberculosis and pneumonia are among some of the other fatal bacterial diseases which would usually result in a fatality. Antibiotics decreased the mortality rates, and so new antibiotics were formed.

    Read More

  • polio vaccine

    617 Words  | 2 Pages

    years, and there is still no cure, but at the peak of its devastation in the United

    Read More

  • The Decline of Infectious Diseases

    1109 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about Meningitis

Open Document