Infectious Diseases

One of the leading causes of blindness caused by infection is likely not one you would really clue into. Trachoma is a disease caused by bacteria and it can cause blindness, particularly in people in indigenous countries who do not have ready access to sanitary conditions or proper medical attention. Several African countries lead the pack in incidences of Trachoma.

Cause and Transmission

This disease is contagious and is caused by bacteria called Chlamydia trachomatis, a bacterium related to the sexually transmitted disease Chlamydia. This disease usually affects both eyes rather than just one. This is because the disease is spread through mucosal membranes, particularly secretions from the throat, nose and eyes.

Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) is a recent public health concern that typically causes treatable skin infections such as boils, but also can lead to life-threatening conditions that are more difficult to treat. A study from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of NIH, reports that infections are caused mostly by a single strain, known as USA300, of an evolving bacterium. It has spread with “extraordinary transmissibility” throughout the United States during the past five years, according to the study ^[1], published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Oropouche fever is a tropical disease that typically manifests itself in epidemics rather than single cases here and there. It is a febrile illness with no particular telling characteristics other than it is often compared to mild cases of dengue fever. Oropouche fever is named after the Oropouche River found in Trinidad and Tobago. There is also a nickname for this tropical illness, febre de Mojui, named after a village called Mojui in Northern Brazil where the illness presented itself during a clearing of rainforested areas there.

The famous drawing here is by Louis Wain, an English cat artist who in his later years developed schizophrenia, which some think may have been due to toxoplasmosis caused by his prolonged exposure to cats. A recent study ^[1] from Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, suggests that Toxoplasmosis, an infection with the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, carried by cats and farm animals, may in fact, raise the risk of a person developing schizophrenia.

AIDS is a disease that affects unprecedented numbers of people across America and the world. It is a type of disease that is rapidly spreading, especially in developing nations. Most people do not fully understand the progression of the disease, and to that end, the World Health Organization has developed a type of ‘staging’ that helps patients with the disease to identify what their symptoms are and how far the disease has progressed.

The World Health Organization’s standards have been proven to be very useful in locations where there are limited resources with which to assess an individual’s progression of the disease. There is no type of timeline used in the AIDS staging progress, as individuals that are affected by the disease may progress through the symptoms very slowly or quite fast.