Sleeping Sickness Essay

09-09-2012 Day 1: I went to sleep at 1:00 am and woke up at 6:11 am. The dream was that my grandmother passed away and that I had nobody to confide in. It got to a point where I just went

In addition to causing a problem with the snail population, the New Guinea Flatworm is also bringing a massive problem into the U.S. that deeply affects humans. This problem is a parasite called the rat lungworm, which New Guinea Flatworms carry. These parasites burrow into the brain and can be spread to humans. The symptoms of those infected with rat lungworm are muscle aches and light sensitivity, but most people recover without ever knowing what

I have completed the sleep assessment and I am not surprise with the outcome it gave me. The results showed that my sleep habits could be better. Some days are better than others, but generally, I do wake up drowsy and hitting my alarm clock once or twice. I admit, I usually stay up on my phone past midnight like any other young adult. If it is not my phone that is keeping me up at night, it’s usually my mind reminding me of all the stress that may be going on in my life.

Sleep deprivation is prevalent in industrialized societies and has been linked to serious health issues and traffic accidents. This essay views sleep and sleep deprivation from five different motivational perspectives in order to gain a holistic understanding of the phenomena. From evolutionary, psychodynamic, behaviourist, cognitive, and hierarchy of needs perspectives, it is inferred that the cognitive and behaviourist perspectives uphold the most merit for gaining understanding into sleep and sleep deprivation. However, it is

Chagas disease, also known as American Trypanosomiasis, is a tropical disease caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, transmitted to humans through contact with the feces of an infected triatomine bug. The triatomine bug known as the kissing bug is a subspecies of the Reduviidae family. The bug itself does not cause the disease. Through contact with the fecal matter from the kissing bug, which is excreted near the bite wound, the parasite enters the bloodstream and begins to develop and reproduce.

A new deadly virus has been sweeping the nations. It’s airborne, it is in the water, It’s on everything that you touch. Even being within 15 feet of a person with this disease can cause you to catch it, and believe me, that’s the last thing I’d want. This new virus is called XPTL, and it stands for X Parasitic Tainted Lungs. As said before, it is indeed a virus and can be cured, but it has the effects of a parasite invasion. Almost as if its draining the life right out of you. It starts by causing your lungs to harden and turn a purple-black sort of color, with side effects such as: Shortness of breath, sensitivity to bright light, nausea, rough cough, discoloration of the iris’, and numbness in the toes.

Chagas disease (T. cruzi) is a deadly disease triggered by the parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi). This disease is commonly found in Latin America but it is also an endemic in America. A qualitative chemiluminescent immunoassay (ChLIA) was used to test the blood donations. It aided in detecting any antibodies to the T. cruzi virus in the human serum and the plasma specimens. The reactive donations with the disease were tested further by a second screening test and a confirmatory test. These tests were used to contained positive results. Those reactive blood samples are then destroyed and not used for transfusion.

Discovered in 1909 by Carlos Chagas, Chagas disease, or American trypanosomiasis, affects an estimated 8 million individuals annually according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of individuals affected by this disease annually makes it a significant, yet preventable, problem. As a chronic parasitic infection, the disease is transmitted by insects and most commonly found in impoverished regions of Latin America, as well as the rest of the Americas. The purpose of this report is to explain the biology of this disease as well as its epidemiology and prevention strategies.

symptoms mainly caused by damage to the host by the organism itself, or by the host

Once the immune system reacts to the parasitic egg the victim’s skin becomes inflamed causing extreme itching. This severe itching has been known to cause some to commit suicide. This migration causes the once normal human skin to become thick and depigmented resembling and feeling like that of an elephants (pachyderm) skin. Figure 5 is a picture from the Neglected Tropical Disease website (2010) which shows “a Ugandan man suffering from [river blindness]. [The picture] shows the inflammation and de-pigmentation the condition is

The disease that is caused by T. gondii is formally known as Toxoplasmosis. It has the ability to affect any warm-blooded vertebrate animal, but it’s relatively common in humans. It is one of the most common diseases seen in developed countries, affecting about 200,000 humans per year. The disease can be contracted by humans through eating meat infected with tissue cysts or exposure to the litter of infected cats. Women who are pregnant are often advised to refrain from changing the litter of their house cats, because infection of a mother can possibly lead to a condition known as congenital toxoplasmosis within the unborn child. The weakened and undeveloped state of the fetus’ immune system poses a serious health risk, assuming the fetus survives the rest of its term in-utero.

Annually, 200 million malaria cases are contracted and of these, 90% occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. Approximately one million people die annually, making plasmodium falciparum the most deadly parasitic disease. Contraction of plasmodium falciparum begins when a female Anopheles mosquito injects sporozoites, an early form of plasmodium falciparum, into the host. This sporozite is then transported to the human liver where it undergoes asexual reproduction producing merozoites. The merozoites invade other liver cells and enter the host’s bloodstream, where they invade erythrocyte. After the infection of the erythrocyte, the merozoite is transformed into a trophozoite, which then begins asexual reproduction near the nucleus to form a schizont in the erythrocytic cell. The schizont then asexually reproduces to produce mononucleated merozoites. When the erythrocytic cell ruptures due to the 3,000-4,000 merozoites produced, symptoms of fever and chills are induced within the host. This life cycle is extremely damaging to children; persons under the age of 5 account for 86% of malaria fatalities. Malaria has other characteristic effects, such as yellowing of the skin/eyes (jaundice), sweating, vomiting, weakness, and nausea. Current mortality rates in Africa are 9.33% per 1000 children, which represent 28.2% of all fatalities for those under five. The story changes dramatically as the host

Black fly is the best known medically important insect, which belongs to a genus of Simulium, family of Simuliidae and the order of Diptera. Many species of female black flies are blood-sucking habit and they transmit the parasitic nematode Onchocerca volvulus, the causative organism of human onchocerciasis (river blindness) (Anbalagan et al., 2014a). It is commonly found in tropical Africa, Central America, South America and Yemen, where 30 million people are infected. Moreover, female blackfly bites may become itchy and swollen in human body for a number of days. In sensitized individuals reaction to black fly saliva injected at the feeding site may cause a syndrome known as “black fly fever” that consists of headaches, fever, nausea, and/or inflammation of nymph nodes (Harwood and James, 1979).

Chagas disease is caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, and about 7 million of people are infected in the endemic area of Latin America. Was discovered in 1909 by the Brazilian physician Carlos Chagas, and the infection occurs mainly by contact with de feces or urine of infected triatomine bugs, but there are other infection routes such as: congenital, transfusions, transplants and contaminated food. The Chagas disease has two stages, an acute and a chronic phase, in the acute stage the parasite can be found in the circulating blood and may be mild or asymptomatic. In the chronic phase, the parasites are in the heart and digestive muscles, most of infected people never develop Chagas-related, but a parcel of the infected suffer

What do the effects of sleep deprivation have on people? When a person does not get enough sleep, he or she is depriving his or her body of something that it needs. A delightful sleep is one of the most satisfying human experiences with a role to play in supporting a good mood and cognitive acuity as well as in promoting physiologic balance and resilience (Chittora, Jain and Suhalka). People think because they get an insufficient number of hours of sleep, they will not have an emotional impact by it. Sleep is a required need for peoples’ day to day life to be able to perform and stay healthy emotionally and physically. The effects of sleep deprivation are an issue because it affects mood, performance, and health.