Infectious disease is considered an ever evolving issue world-wide. A number of health officials and idealists believed that the threat of infectious disease would have been eradicated by now.1 Infectious disease remains the leading cause of death across the globe and the third leading cause of death in the United States.2 Within the scope of infectious disease, the most common cause of illness is viral respiratory tract infections, also referred to as VRTI.3 Recently, a new strain of virus related to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome commonly referred to as SARS has been identified.4,5 The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome is a viral infection that affects the respiratory tract in humans and has recently been discovered in a small number of animals.6 Although the disease is fairly new, considerable research has lead to significant findings on the epidemiology of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome infections, including clinical manifestations, treatments, transmission, and virological characteristics of the virus causing the infection.
The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome now also referred to as MERs-CoV was initially discovered in Saudi Arabia in 2012.6,7 Similar to SARS-CoV, the patient presented with acute pneumonia and renal failure in June 2012.5 After culturing sputum sample from the patient the MERs-CoV virus strain was identified for the first time in a human host. Following the initial patient’s diagnosis and treatment a subsequent patient was treated in the United Kingdom and was believed to have been infected in Qatar.7,8,9 According to the World Health Organization Middles East Respiratory Syndrome Research Group, from April 2012 through October 2013 a total of 144 confirmed MERs-CoV cases has been identified (...
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...surveillance biases, and transmissibility. Lancet Infectious Diseases [serial online]. January 2014;14(1):50-56. Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed March 9, 2014.
11. World Health Organization. Novel coronavirus update – new virus to be called MERS-CoV. Europe: World Health Organization; 2013. Available at http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/communicable-diseases/influenza/news/news/2013/05/novel-coronavirus-update-new-virus-to-be-called-mers-cov. Accessed on March 9, 2013.
12. against the novel human coronavirus MERS-CoV. Virology Journal [serial online]. September 2013;10(1):1-8. Available from: Academic Search Alumni Edition, Ipswich, MA. Accessed March 11, 2014.
13. WHO, CDC urge vigilance. Nursing [serial online]. September 2013;43(9):27. Available from: Academic Search Alumni Edition, Ipswich, MA. Accessed March 11, 2014.
This extremely pathogenic zoonotic virus is now understood to travel from bat species, to equine intermediate hosts, to humans.[8, 10] The Hendra virus is listed as a Bio-Safety Level (BSL)-4, and can only be studied at a few adequately equipped laboratories worldwide due to its virulence.[1, 2] Case fatality rates
"Plague." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 13 June 2012. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.
The medical field is a vast land of beauty, but with great beauty comes immense horror. There are many deadly viruses and diseases found in the medical field. In the novel, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, the author discusses the many deadly viruses found in the field. The viruses are widespread due to the errors that occur when the viruses are in the presence of human beings. The effects of the errors performed by the human race include a decrease in population and wildlife.
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.
National Institute of Medicine (2007) Ethical and legal considerations in mitigating pandemic disease Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54163/
Liam is a previously healthy boy who has experienced rhinorrhoea, intermittent cough, and poor feeding for the past four days. His positive result of nasopharyngeal aspirate for Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) indicates that Liam has acute bronchiolitis which is a viral infection (Glasper & Richardson, 2010). “Bronchiolitis is the commonest reason for admission to hospital in the first 6 months of life. It describes a clinical syndrome of cough tachypnoea, feeding difficulties and inspiratory crackles on chest auscultation” (Fitzgerald, 2011, p.160). Bronchiolitis can cause respiratory distress and desaturation (91% in the room air) to Liam due to airway blockage; therefore the infant appears to have nasal flaring, intercostal and subcostal retractions, and tachypnoea (54 breathes/min) during breathing (Glasper & Richardson, 2010). Tachycardia (152 beats/min) could occur due to hypoxemia and compensatory mechanism for low blood pressure (74/46mmHg) (Fitzgerald, 2011; Glasper & Richardson, 2010). Moreover, Liam has fever and conjunctiva injection which could be a result of infection, as evidenced by high temperature (38.6°C) and bilateral tympanic membra...
"Special Pathogen Branch." CDC. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17 Jul 2009. Web. 9 Dec 2011. .
Hvistendahl, M, Cohen, J et. al. 2013. ‘New Flu Virus in China Worries and Confuses’ Science 340: 129-130
Marburg Virus is an acute and fatal strand of Filoviridae, there should be a heightened awareness of this virus since it is the predecessor of Ebola and devastated the world first with hemorrhaging. There is no cure and it’s believed to be transferred from primate to human contact. While there has only been one case in the United States of America, this virus devastated Europe and Africa over the years.
Influenza is an acute respiratory illness caused by infection of influenza A and B viruses. The disease can affect both the upper and lower respiratory tract and is often followed by systemic signs and symptoms, such as: sudden onset of fever, chills, non-productive cough, myalgias (muscle pain), headache, nasal congestion, sore throat, and fatigue. (Cox et al.1998). Influenza viruses evolve continuously, challenging mammalian and avian hosts with new variants and causing complex epidemic patterns with regard to age, place, and time. Human influenza viruses cause disease through a variety of direct and indirect pathological effects. The direct effects include destruction of infected cells, damage to respiratory epithelium, and immunological responses that cause general malaise and pneumonia. Indirect effects of infection include secondary bacterial infections due to the tissue damage and other disease such as cardiovascular disease, renal disease, diabetes or chronic pulmonary disease (Schoenbaum S.1996). In the USA, clinical illness affects 5–20% of the population and asymptomatically infects a larger number (Noble G.1982). Infants, who are exposed to influenza epidemics as a novel antigenic challenge after maternal antibodies decline, may have attack rates as high as 30–50% in their first year of life, depending on the frequency of contacts with older siblings (Glezen et al.1997). For reasons, influenza viruses cause epidemics in the northern and southern hemisphere during their respective winters. In the tropics, the timing of activity is less defined, with sometimes year-round circulation or bi-seasonal peaks during the year (Viboud et al.2006).
Viruses have emerged as causes of foodborne disease, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Viruses cause a wide range of diseases in plants, animals and humans. These infections do not occur at random: each group of viruses has its own typical host range and cell preference. Viruses were probably always a cause of food borne disease; however with recent developments in detection we are now able to confirm the presence of viruses. Previously, those outbreaks may have been recorded as having an unknown causative agent.
“Viral Pneumonia: Medline Plus.” Nih.gov. 26 February 2014. National Institutes of Health. 23 March 2014 .
Murray, M.2006. The epidemiology of SARS. In SARS in China: Prelude to pandemic?, ed. A. Kleinman and J. Watson, 17-30. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Potter, P. A., & Perry, A. G. (2009). Fundamentals of nursing (Seventh ed.). St. Louis, Mo.: Mosby Elsevier.
Dengue virus (DENV) is any of the four serotypes that cause the dengue fever or dengue hemorrhagic fever. It is a single positive-stranded RNA virus belonging to the family of Flaviviridae. Its genome is consisted of 11,000 bases that code for three structural proteins, membrane protein M (prM), envelope protein E, capsid protein C, seven nonstructural proteins NS1-NS5, and a short non-coding region on both the 5’ and 3’ ends 2, 6, 19.