Mad Cow Disease

What Is Mad Cow Disease?

Mad cow disease is an incurable, fatal brain disease that affects cattle and possibly some other animals, such as goats and sheep. The medical name for mad cow disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy (pronounced: bo-vine spun-jih-form en-seh-fah-la-puh-thee), or BSE for short.

It's called mad cow disease because it affects a cow's nervous system, causing a cow to act strangely and lose control of its ability to do normal things, such as walk.

How Do People Get It?

Only certain animals can get BSE — people don't actually get mad cow disease. However, experts have found a link between BSE and a rare brain condition that affects people, called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). Researchers believe that people who eat beef from cows that have BSE are at risk of developing a form of vCJD.

Wilson's Disease: Inherited Disease of Toxic Copper Accumulation

Due to a failure of copper excretion in the liver, toxic levels of copper build up and cause damage to the liver and central nervous system.

Wilson's disease or Wilson disease or hepatolenticular degeneration is an inherited disorder involving toxic accumulation of copper in the liver and the central nervous system (CNS). Accumulation in the CNS usually occurs in the sites of the basal ganglia and globus pallidus. These symptoms are all due to a failure of copper excretion by the liver.

Genetics of Wilson Disease

The incidence of Wilson's disease is 3 in 100 000. It is an autosomal recessive disorder where there is a mutation on the ATP7B gene, an ATPase, which is a copper transporter on chromosome 13. There are many known mutations but the most common is HIS1069GLU which is most common in the European population.

Clinical Features of Wilson's Disease

Children can present with liver disease and this can be expressed as fulminant liver failure, hepatitis, or cirrhosis. In young adults, one can see CNS signs such as tremor, dysarthria, dysphagia, dyskinesias, dystonias, dementia, and parkinsonism. They can also develop affective features such as depression or mania, labile emotions, fluctuating libido and personality changes. With regards to their cognition, memory can decrease and problem solving can become increasingly difficult. A famous sign of Wilson disease is the presence of Kayser-Fleischer rings, which are copper deposits in the iris.

Tests and Diagnosis of Wilson Disease

In patients with Wilson's disease, serum copper and serum caeruoplasmin are usually decreased. One can test with a 24 hour urinary copper excretion. Molecular testing is available to look for mutations in the ATP7B gene and to make a definitive diagnosis. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is often used to look for signs of basal ganglia degeneration.

Management and Treatment of Wilson's Disease

Patients with Wilson's disease are on lifelong penicillinamine.

Penicillinamine is a metabolite of peniciliin but it has no antibiotic properties. It is a chelating agent that binds to accumulated copper and is then eliminated through the urine. Some possible side effects of penicillinamine are nausea, rash, low white cell count, anemia, thrombocytopenia, and haematuria.

Read more at Suite101: Wilson's Disease: Inherited Disease of Toxic Copper Accumulation http://humangenetics.suite101.com/article.cfm/wilsons-disease--inherited-disease-of-toxic-copper-accumulation#ixzz0qAXdgfjh

TB

About TB


Tuberculosis (TB) is a serious, debilitating and highly contagious disease affecting millions of people worldwide. If not properly treated, it is often fatal.

Spread through the air from one person to another when an infected person coughs or sneezes, the bacteria that cause TB usually attack the lungs. However, TB can attack other parts of the body, including the kidneys, the spine and the brain.

Until the mid-20th century a leading cause of death in the developed world, TB remains a scourge in many developing countries. And new drug-resistant strains have caused its reemergence as a health threat even in regions where until recently medical treatment had kept the disease at bay.

As a result, the TB pandemic continues unabated. Despite efforts to control and treat tuberculosis, every year eight million more people are infected with the disease, and upwards of 1.7 million people — many of them children — die.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb), the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, is present in one-third of the world's population, though not everyone shows signs of the disease. Mounting drug resistance, including multi- and extensively drug resistant TB (MDR-TB and XDR-TB), coupled with the growing number of people co-infected with TB and HIV, make the pandemic more threatening and more deadly.

Why a New Vaccine

To win the fight against TB, a comprehensive approach is needed that includes new and more effective vaccines as well as improved diagnostics and treatment.
The Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, created in 1921, is the only existing vaccine against TB. Unfortunately, it is only partially effective. It provides some protection against severe forms of pediatric TB, but is unreliable against adult pulmonary TB, which accounts for most of the disease burden worldwide. Although BCG is the most widely administered vaccine in the world, there have never been as many cases of TB on the planet. There is therefore an urgent need for a modern, safe and effective vaccine that would prevent all forms of TB, including the drug-resistant strains, in all age groups and among people with HIV.

Current Challenges

Treating TB is challenging, even in developed countries where there is a modern health care system and infrastructure. Current treatment regimens last six to nine months, and erratic or inconsistent treatment breeds multidrug-resistant and even extensively drug-resistant TB, which means that this pandemic could become even more difficult to control throughout the world.

TB is a leading cause of death among people who are also infected with HIV, according to the World Health Organization. One-third of the 33.2 million people living with HIV also suffer from TB. Without proper treatment, approximately 90 percent of people living with HIV die within two to three months of contracting TB.

The Current Situation


Someone in the world is infected with tuberculosis every second.

Two billion people worldwide are infected with TB — about one out of every three people on the planet.

TB kills nearly 1.8 million people a year.

Among people who are also infected with HIV, TB is a leading cause of death.

Multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) strains of TB are found throughout the world.

Despite being one of the most widely used vaccines in the world today, the TB vaccine — BCG — has had no apparent impact on the TB pandemic.

Malaria

Malaria is a vector-borne infectious disease caused by a eukaryotic protist of the genus Plasmodium. It is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions, including parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Each year, there are approximately 350–500 million cases of malaria,^[1] killing between one and three million people, the majority of whom are young children in Sub-Saharan Africa.Ninety percent of malaria-related deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria is commonly associated with poverty, but is also a cause of poverty and a major hindrance to economic development.

Malaria is one of the most common infectious diseases and an enormous public health problem. Five species of the plasmodium parasite can infect humans; the most serious forms of the disease are caused by Plasmodium falciparum. Malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium malariae causes milder disease in humans that is not generally fatal. A fifth species, Plasmodium knowlesi, causes malaria in macaques but can also infect humans. This group of human-pathogenic Plasmodium species is usually referred to as malaria parasites.

Usually, people get malaria by being bitten by an infective female Anopheles mosquito. Only Anopheles mosquitoes can transmit malaria, and they must have been infected through a previous blood meal taken on an infected person. When a mosquito bites an infected person, a small amount of blood is taken, which contains microscopic malaria parasites. About one week later, when the mosquito takes its next blood meal, these parasites mix with the mosquito's saliva and are injected into the person being bitten. The parasites multiply within red blood cells, causing symptoms that include symptoms of anemia (light-headedness, shortness of breath, tachycardia, etc.), as well as other general symptoms such as fever, chills, nausea, flu-like illness, and, in severe cases, coma, and death. Malaria transmission can be reduced by preventing mosquito bites with mosquito nets and insect repellents, or by mosquito control measures such as spraying insecticides inside houses and draining standing water where mosquitoes lay their eggs. Work has been done on malaria vaccines with limited success and more exotic controls, such as genetic manipulation of mosquitoes to make them resistant to the parasite have also been considered

Glaucoma

Glaucoma is a disease that affects the optic nerve and involves loss of retinal ganglion cells in a characteristic pattern.

There are many different sub-types of glaucoma but they can all be considered as a type of optic neuropathy. Raised intraocular pressure is a significant risk factor for developing glaucoma (above 22 mmHg or 2.9 kPa). One person may develop nerve damage at a relatively low pressure, while another person may have high eye pressure for years and yet never develop damage. Untreated glaucoma leads to permanent damage of the optic nerve and resultant visual field loss, which can progress to blindness.

Haemophilia

Haemophilia (also spelled hemophilia in North America, is a group of hereditary genetic disorders that impair the body's ability to control blood clotting or coagulation, which is used to stop bleeding when a blood vessel is broken.

Haemophilia A (clotting factor VIII deficiency) is the most common form of the disorder, occurring at about 1 in 5,000–10,000 male births.

Haemophilia B (factor IX deficiency) occurs at about 1 in about 20,000–34,000 male births.

Causes

• Haemophilia A is a recessive X-linked genetic disorder involving a lack of functional clotting Factor VIII and represents 90% of haemophilia cases.
• Haemophilia B is a recessive X-linked genetic disorder involving a lack of functional clotting Factor IX. It is similar to but less common than haemophilia A.
• Haemophilia C is an autosomal genetic disorder (ie not X-linked) involving a lack of functional clotting Factor XI. Haemophilia C is not completely recessive: heterozygous individuals also show increased bleeding

Similarly to most recessive sex-linked, X chromosome disorders, only males typically exhibit symptoms. This is due to the fact that females have two X chromosomes while males have only one, lacking a 'back up' copy for the defective gene the defective gene becomes manifest more easily in males. Because females have two X chromosomes and because haemophilia is rare, the chance of a female having two defective copies of the gene is very low, thus females are almost exclusivelyasymptomatic carriers of the disorder. Female carriers may inherit the defective gene from either their mother, father, or it may be a new mutation. Only under rare circumstances do females actually have haemophilia. Affected males typically inherit the defective gene from their mother, or it can be a new mutation.

Haemophilia has featured prominently in European royalty and thus is sometimes known as "the royal disease".

Japanese encephalitis

Japanese encephalitis (Japanese: 日本脳炎, Nihon-nōen; previously known as Japanese B encephalitis to distinguish it from von Economo's A encephalitis is a disease caused by the mosquito-borne Japanese encephalitis virus. The Japanese encephalitis virus is a virus from the family Flaviviridae.

Mumps

Mumps or epidemic parotitis is a viral disease of the human species, caused by the mumps virus. Prior to the development of vaccination and the introduction of avaccine, it was a common childhood disease worldwide, and is still a significant threat to health in the third world

Dumdum fever

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), also known as kala-azar, black fever, and Dumdum fever,^[1]:426 is the most severe form of leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is a diseasecaused by protozoan parasites of the Leishmania genus. It is the second-largest parasitic killer in the world (after malaria), responsible for an estimated 500,000 cases each year worldwide.^[2] The parasite migrates to the internal organs such as liver, spleen (hence 'visceral)' and bone marrow and if left untreated will almost always result in the death of the host. Signs and symptoms include fever, weight loss, mucosal ulcers, fatigue, anemia and substantial swelling of the liver and spleen. Of particular concern, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is the emerging problem of HIV/VL co-infection

TB

In the past, tuberculosis has been called consumption, because it seemed to consume people from within, with a bloody cough, fever, pallor, and long relentless wasting. Other names included phthisis (Greek for consumption) and phthisis pulmonalis; scrofula (in adults), affecting the lymphatic system and resulting in swollen neck glands; tabes mesenterica, TB of the abdomen and lupus vulgaris, TB of the skin; wasting disease; white plague, because sufferers appear markedly pale; king's evil, because it was believed that a king's touch would heal scrofula; and Pott's disease, or gibbus of the spine and joints.

Dr. Robert Koch discovered the tuberculosis bacillus.

Miliary tuberculosis—now commonly known as disseminated TB—occurs when the infection invades the circulatory system, resulting in lesions which have the appearance of milletseeds on X-ray.^[96][98] TB is also called Koch's disease, after the scientist Robert Koch