Various bacteria
tsmith | December 5, 2005Clostridium difficile has joined MRSA, SARS, avian influenza, and West Nile as a hot new emerging disease. This bacterium, a cousin to Clostridium tetani-the causative agent of tetanus--and Clostridium botulinum--the botulism bacterium--is a spore-forming anaerobe. Carried by about 3 percent of healthy adults, the bacterium is generally present as a metabolically inactive spore. The bacterium typically causes problems in the nosocomial (hospital) environment, where up to 40 percent of hospital patients may be colonized. Clinical disease generally presents as watery diarrhea and cramps, and…
tsmith | October 24, 2005Doctors recommend hepatitis shot for kids
Hepatitis A is a virus that causes (obviously) hepatitis, as well as jaundice, fatigue, nausea, fever, loss of appetite, and diarrhea. It's often spread fecal-orally; that is, you put something in your mouth that has fecal contamination. (Just makes you want to run to the bathroom and brush your teeth, doesn't it?) It also can be spread via sexual contact and shared needles (or other contact with blood or body fluids). It's estimated that there are ~40,000 acute cases of Hep A per year, with many of them going undiagnosed. It's one of those diseases…
tsmith | October 19, 2005It's situations like this that really irk me.
I mentioned the tularemia detection in DC here almost 2 weeks ago, already annoyed that there hadn't been more information about it. There has been some discussion on the ProMed list, but it's hardly been a blip in the mainstream media. Yesterday, there was an article in Salon further discussing it.
The background:
On Sept. 24, 2005, tens of thousands of protesters marched past the White House and flooded the National Mall near 17th Street and Constitution Avenue. They had arrived from all over the country for a day of speeches and concerts to…
tsmith | October 12, 2005In the October issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, James Hughes and Jeffrey Koplan discuss the problem of safe water. Hazardous drinking water and poor sanitation is something that gets brought up when there's a disaster (like Katrina, or the tsunami earlier this year), but many people don't realize that a large portion of the earth's population has to deal with this situation everyday.
Unsafe water is a global public health threat, placing persons at risk for a host of diarrheal and other diseases as well as chemical intoxication. Unsanitary water has particularly devastating effects…
tsmith | October 10, 2005Okay, so it's just an MSNBC survey (aided by none other than Dr. Ruth), but geez, when will people ever wise up about sex?
MSNBC.com and Zogby International asked online readers to share some intimate details about their personal lives, and more than 56,000 adult men and women -- one of the largest responses ever to a sex survey in the United States -- revealed that many are playing a pretty risky game.
Just 39 percent of people who took the survey always ask whether a new partner is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, or other STDs. Nearly one-third said they never check on a…
tsmith | October 3, 2005But I thought biologists were too "close-minded?"
Australians Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren won the 2005 Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for showing that bacterial infection, not stress, was to blame for painful ulcers in the stomach and intestine.
The Australians' idea was "very much against prevailing knowledge and dogma because it was thought that peptic ulcer disease was the result of stress and lifestyle," Staffan Normark, a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska institute, said at a news conference.
This is a great example of how science works. These men proposed a…
tsmith | September 16, 2005The Washington Post today reminds us that there has been little progress in uncovering the source of the 2001 anthrax attacks. [1]
First, a disclaimer. I'm not an "evolutionary biologist," per se. I have what is I swear the longest job title ever--molecular infectious disease epidemiologist. As such, I often get asked, "what's the relevance of evolution to your work?" Or, I'll read editorials such as Dr. Skell's recently in The Scientist [2] questioning the use of evolutionary theory in experimental biology, and be disheartened. Yet the method of investigating the anthrax attacks shows…
tsmith | May 22, 2005Every now and then, I check in over at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) to see what new projects they're up to, as well as to see if they've released a particular genome sequence I'm waiting on. Yesterday I noticed this project:
Innovative Metagenomics Strategy Used To Study Oral Microbes
Rockville, MD - The mouth is awash in microbes, but scientists so far have merely scratched the surface in identifying and studying the hundreds of bacteria that live in biofilm communities that stick to the teeth and gums.
In an innovative new project that could help improve the detection and…