Exhuming Skeletal Remains: How Cholera Deaths of the Past Could Shine a Blue- Light of Hope

Cholera remains an important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. It is currently in its seventh official pandemic, as recognised by the World Health Organization. Whilst the disease remains a scourge of the present, studying its paleopathology could help further with understanding the nature of the disease and its evolution, as well as presenting a potential opportunity for finding a cure or improving current treatment regimes. Cholera is one of a number ofdiseases that has a presence in the archaeological record.

In terms of human osteopathology an important discovery was recently made within the grounds of a cemetery located in an old church in Tuscany, Italy. The exhumation of bodies in this area may provide key information concerning the bacterium responsible for cholera. This article assesses the significance of the on-going excavation.Cholera is an infection of the small intestine. It is one of the world’s oldest diseases and it is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae.  Read more.................

V. cholerae is a Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, comma-shaped bacterium. The basis of the infection is through V. cholerae secreting choleragen (known as “the cholera toxin”). Structurally, the toxin is similar to heat-labile enterotoxins associated with enteric bacteria. Two serogroups of V. cholerae termed O1 and O139 cause outbreaks. V. cholerae O1 causes the majority of outbreaks, while O139, a more recently discovered serotype identified in Bangladesh in 1992, is, thus far, of less global reach, being confined to South-East Asia.

Revisiting the Current Assays Associated to Host Immune Responses Against Tuberculosis Infection

As an ancient microbe, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) is an extremely successful pathogen. MTB causes more deaths worldwide now than at any previous time in history as the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately one-third of the world’s population (roughly 2 billion total) is infected with MTB. MTB is a major health threat, causing 9 million new infections and between 2 and 3 million deaths annually. Future prospects look bleak due to the increasing impact of HIV and drug resistance MTB strains (MDR) on the TB epidemic.

The clinical course of TB provides clues as to the mechanisms that underlie MTB’s success as a pathogen. First, MTB establishes infection with a small inoculum, suggesting that it inhibits innate immune responses. Second, it often persists throughout the life of the host, suggesting evasion of adaptive immunity. Third, the transmission of MTB from one host to another typically depends upon the formation of lung cavities in which aerosols are generated by coughing or sneezing.

The mechanisms of lung cavitation are complex but include bystander damage of healthy tissue by the host cellular immune response. It is generally thought that granuloma formation is a means by which the host controls certain pathogens, most notably mycobacteria and fungal species. Granulomas form in animal models of TB and in human infection the scarred result of the granulomatous response to initial infection is sometimes observed as a calcified lesion abutting the pleural in a lower lobe of the lung, the “Ghon lesion”. Although the granuloma limits the extent of early infection, it is ultimately cell-mediated immunity involving T-cells that control MTB replication.

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