The Epidemic Of Vibrio Cholera

5. The release of a toxin from the cholera bacteria is what causes people to experience the dreadful symptoms. A negative health concern of killing the cholera at a quick rate is that since the phages will prevent symptoms from increasingly becoming worse, the “dead” cholera in the intestine may sit there for a longer amount of time instead of running straight through the person which may do more damage to the intestine.

Causes: Cholera is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The bacteria releases a toxin that causes increased release of water from cells in the intestines, which produces severe

Outbreaks of cholera were not isolated to the European and Asian continents, as several major cases within the United States have been recorded back to colonial times. As trade increased with the old world, infected sailors bringing the disease to major port cities, spreading it even further as products became distributed across the nation. Famously documented as one of the most vital turning points for public health medicine within the US, the city of Chicago mirrored what was unfolding in the 1854 London outbreak. Congruent to Snow’s findings, entire families suddenly became severely ill and dying off. As an effort to combat the pestilence, Ellis Chesbrough, an already established railroad engineer, designed a series of sewer systems modeled

Between the 1830’s to 1860’s, cholera spread into the United States from India by trade routes. Cholera is an acute diarrhoeal infection caused by drinking or eating material that is infected with Vibrio cholerae. Cholera causes watery diarrhoea, but can show days later or never show

Steven Johnson provides a thought-provoking observation of the bacterial disease cholera in his book The Ghost Map. He explores the means by which the deadly Vibrio Cholorae was able to devastate a developing section of London in only a week’s time at the start of September in 1854. Johnson offers details on the development of cities, which supplied the perfect environment for the bacterium to thrive and kill off thousands of people in weeks. Before the 1854 epidemic, Cholera was an unidentifiable mystery to the scientists and thinkers of London. Theories of how the illness spread and how it was to be cured varied extensively, each concept with its own unwavering supporters eager to spread their ideas while debunking others. In The Ghost Map, Johnson tells the

The year is 1849 and so far I have discovered several things about the cholera outbreak in London. My colleagues assume that the cause of cholera is caused by poison carried in the air that results from decaying matter (Fairbanks and Candelaria 10). However, I disagree with my colleagues in their belief of the miasma theory (Mckenzie 13). I have constructed a theory that the disease is spread by person-to-person contact and the material causing the cholera, must be in fact, swallowed and introduced into the alimentary canal (Fairbanks and Candelaria 10). My experience with the disease shows that not everyone who treats a sick person becomes sick, and others get sick even with the absence of a sick person in close proximity (Fairbanks and Candelaria 10). I have found that physicians who practice superior cleanliness do not get cholera. Cholera outbreak also seems to be worse among working class people, poor cleanliness seems to be what contributes to the spread of the disease (Fairbanks and Candelaria 10). The sanitary conditions of the city are not well by any means. The city is overcrowded, streets were unpaved, filthy, and heaped with trash and garbage (McKenzie 11). Most people get their drinking water from a water pump that is in close proximity to their house.

It is estimated that 3 to 5 million cases of cholera occur worldwide annually, and 100, 000 to 120,000 of these result in death (Fisher et al., 2014). In comparison, the cholera outbreak started on October 21, 2010 and three months later more than 4,000 people were reportedly killed and about 217,000 infected stated Tuite et al., (2011). Two years later, more than half a million were infected and about 75 hundred people died (Schilling et al., 2013). The cholera epidemic was triggered by the contamination of the Artibonite River (the main river system of Haiti) and one of its tributaries downstream from a military camp (Haus-Cheymol et al., 2012). Within the first month, cholera had spread not only to all regions of Haiti but also to the neighboring, Dominican Republic, with which Haiti shares the island of

Cholera is a bacterial infection that causes severe diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to dehydration, shock, and death. We chose this topic because the highly publicized earthquake that occurred in Haiti in 2010 played a large role in the cholera epidemic that arose 8 months after the earthquake. Since the earthquake, there have been over 470,000 confirmed cases of cholera (Cholera -Vibrio Cholerae Infection 2014). Cholera persists there because of the poor sanitary conditions and the unprotected drinking water facilities that have been contaminated by the bacteria. Fixing the issue of cholera in Haiti requires a three-part approach such as vaccinations, water filtration and education. Using our needs assessment, in

Cholera remains a drastically severe disease, killing hundreds of people each outbreak. When ingested, it attaches to the mucosal lining of the intestines and disrupts the normal flow of ions so that there is more sodium, chloride, and water in the intestinal lumen than normal and results in massive diarrhea. Cholera has made a global impact and been endemic in almost all parts of the world. Cholera control strongly emphasizes sanitation, clean drinking water, isolation, and careful food preparation. Two ways our body works against cholera as a self-limiting disease are sloughing cells and the secretory immunoglobulin (sIgA) antibody produced by mucus throughout our body. There are

Modern usage of ‘epidemic’ to politicise or instil with “urgency” an agenda has made the term too broad to define, but this quasi-metaphorical use of the word represents a new diversity in its definition. Epidemics create a window from which the social historian has access to both the “complexities of human nature” and the “political arenas that control and disseminate information”: an insight to political, cultural, religious and social life that in other circumstances may elude the chroniclers of the past. There is no categorical, empirical or quantifiable rule in defining epidemics; instead they are subject to a series of accepted truisms - that they have both a start and an end, that they elicit large social response, that they fragment

Vibrio is a rod shaped bacteria that are also gram negative. They naturally appear in marine or estuarine environments. Also to note there are around about 12 species vibrio that have been known to cause diseases in humans which cause around about an estimated 80,000 illnesses, 500 hospitalizations and 100 deaths ever year in the US. The main reason that people get infected by vibrio is from coming into contact with seawater or through consuming raw or undercooked seafood. Vibriosis usually causes primary septicaemia (blood poisoning), diarrhoea, wound infections, or other extra intestinal infections. Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a strain of vibrio that has a rod shaped is usually found in saltwater and if ingested can causes gastrointestinal

Vibrio cholerae is a "comma" shaped Gram-negative bacteria with a single, polar flagellum for movement. There are numerous strains of V. cholerae, some of which are pathogenic and some of which are not. V. cholerae is a facultative anaerobic organism and was first isolated as the cause of cholera by an Italian anatomist Filippo Pacini in 1854, but his discovery was not widely known until Robert Koch, working independently 30 years later, publicized the knowledge and the means of fighting the disease. The entire genome contains two circular chromosomes. Chromosome 1 has 2.961.149 base pairs with 2.770 open reading frames and chromosome 2 has 1.072.315 base pairs, with 1.115 open reading frames. It is the larger first chromosome that contains the crucial genes for toxicity, regulation of toxicity and important cellular functions, such as transcription and translation.The second chromosome is determined to be different from a plasmid or megaplasmid due to the inclusion of housekeeping and other essential genes in the genome, including essential genes for metabolism, heat-shock proteins and 16S rRNA genes, which are ribosomal sub-unit genes used to track evolutionary relationships between bacteria. Also relevant in determining if the replicon is a chromosome is whether it represents a significant percentage of the genome, and chromosome 2 is 40% by size of the entire genom.(fig 1)

The disease, cholera, is an infection of the intestines, caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. As stated in Microbes and Infections of the Gut, the bacterium is “a Gram-negative, comma- shaped, highly motile organism with a single terminal flagellum” (105). Cholera is characterized by the most significant symptom that presents with the disease, diarrhea, and victims can lose up to twenty liters of body fluids in a day. Cholera can be a serious disease, due to the serious dehydration that can occur, but it is only fatal if treatment is not administered as soon as possible. This research paper includes information on the causes of cholera, symptoms, ways of treatment, studies of treatments, complications that may occur, the

The bacterium that causes cholera is called Vibri Cholerae. Usually found in food or water contaminated by faeces

Cholera is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. An infection from this bacterium, if not treated soon, can cause serious illness or even death within hours of contracting the infection¹. Vibrio cholerae infects the large intestine, causing extreme cases of diarrhea in which an individual has the potential to die within hours of developing symptoms due to dehydration. Symptoms of the disease include rapid heart rate, hypotension, and dry mucous membranes².