Word: bacterium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...among those students who have been asked to submit to a Mantoux Test, which determines whether an individual has produced antibodies to the tuberculosis bacterium, some have tested positive, according to Kate Matthews, a nurse in the Cambridge Public Health Department...
...some surrounding provinces are still underwater, and state-run hospitals have been overwhelmed by an outbreak of leptospirosis, a bacterial disease spread from the urine of infected rats and other animals. (In Sri Lanka, where there was a large outbreak in 2008, leptospirosis is known as "rat fever.") The bacterium is transmitted by the standing floodwater through cuts in the skin and by people swallowing contaminated water. This month's leptospirosis outbreak - the worst by far that doctors here can remember - has swollen the disaster's death toll, claiming 157 victims from mostly poor communities. (See pictures of the storm...
...potential for more outbreaks is still there," warns Tayag. Last week the Philippine health authorities began distributing the antibiotic doxycycline in flooded communities, a procedure recommended by the WHO. Plans are now being readied for a large-scale spraying of saltwater into still-flooded areas to kill the leptospirosis bacterium, which only lives in freshwater. The timing to ask for help from the global health authorities - as well as other decisions such as the distributing of antibiotics and the saltwater spraying - were "judgment" calls, says Tayag...
Much has changed since then. Genetic advances have given researchers entirely new ways of developing vaccines. For example, instead of using the entire virus or bacterium to activate the human immune system, new strategies rely on genetic snippets from infectious bugs, which can trigger immunity without the risk of infection...
...tree. Every now and then, DNA moves between species. Viruses ferry genes from one host to another. Bacteria swap genes inside our bodies, evolving resistance to antibiotics in our own gut. Some 2 billion years ago, one of our single-celled ancestors took in an oxygen-consuming bacterium. That microbe became the thousands of tiny sacs found in each of our cells today, known as mitochondria, that let us breathe oxygen. When genes move this way, it's as if two branches of the tree of life are being grafted together...