Cholera
Cholera
Cholera (or Asiatic cholera or epidemic cholera) is a severe diarrheal disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Transmission to humans is by ingesting contaminated water or food. The major reservoir for cholera was long assumed to be humans, but some evidence suggests that it is the aquatic environment. It is extremely deadly.
V. cholerae is a Gram negative bacteria which produces cholera toxin, an enterotoxin, whose action on the mucosal epithelium lining of the small intestine is responsible for the characteristic massive diarrhea of the disease. In its most severe forms, cholera is one of the most rapidly fatal illnesses known: A healthy person may become hypotensive within an hour of the onset of symptoms and may die within 2-3 hours if no treatment is provided.[1] More commonly, the disease progresses from the first liquid stool to shock in 4-12 hours, with death following in 18 hours to several days without rehydration treatment.
Symptoms
Symptoms include those of general GI tract (stomach) upset, and massive watery diarrhea. Symptoms may also include terrible muscle and stomach cramps, vomiting and fever in early stages. In a later stage the diarrhea becomes “rice water stool” (almost clear with flecks of white) and ruptured capillaries may turn the skin black and blue with sunken eyes and cheeks with blue lips. Symptoms are caused by massive body fluid loss induced by the enterotoxins that V. cholerae produces. The main enterotoxin, known as cholera toxin, interacts with G proteins and cyclic AMP in the intestinal lining to open ion channels. As ions flow into the intestinal lumen (lining), body fluids (mostly water) flow out of the body due to osmosis leading to massive diarrhea as the fluid is expelled from the body. The body is “tricked” into releasing massive amounts of fluid into the small intestine which shows up in up to 20 liters (or 20% of body weight) of liquid diarrhea in an adult and massive dehydration. Radical dehydration can bring death within a day through collapse of the circulatory system.
Information Courtesy of Wikipedia
