Archive for the 'Infectious Diseases' Category

Human abdominal organs like stomach and intestines are mainly covered by a two layered membrane called peritoneum.

This layer mainly supports the abdominal organs of your body and protects them from several infections. Any inflammation or infection to this protective layer results in a serious inflammatory disease, peritonitis.

Peritonitis requires immediate treatment!

Peritonitis infection usually spreads through the organs within your abdomen and as a result this protective layer, peritoneum gets completely affected and causes a pus filled cavity on the walls of the layer. As a result, it can lead to many life threatening health conditions, so it is very essential to treat this inflammation in initial stages itself.

Any rupture of infection, any where along the entire gastrointestinal tract can be responsible for creating a pathway for the entry of an infectious substance into the peritoneum. As a result, the muscles which are present within the walls of your intestine become paralyzed and the further movement of the intestinal contents comes to an end.

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Bacterium that causes Lyme disease is Borrelia burgdorferi. It is commonly caused by the bite of ticks.

This bacterium enters through the Ixodes ticks when it bites an infected animal and then they are transmitted to the person. This further leads to Lyme disease.

In most situations, the Lyme disease is reported to be seen in the Northeast, upper Midwest, and Pacific coastal areas of the USA.

How Lyme Disease Can Be Identified?

It is illustrated that the symptoms of Lyme disease can be mostly seen in three stages (not in all cases).

In the first stage of Lyme disease, after one to two weeks of tick bite, a circular skin rash (erythema migrans) appears, but in some cases, it develops after thirty days of tick bite. This erythema migrans looks like a “bull’s eye” with red spot. This red spot is again surrounded by clear skin. Intensifying red rash surrounds the clear skin again.

In darker skin tone people, this rash cannot be seen, but a bruise like appearance can be seen. Commonly, this rash resolves on its own mostly in about 30 days.

Do you regularly follow safety measures to avoid infections in your kid?

Most of you, who have children, have dealt with an assortment of rashes, infections and certain skin irritations over years.

Impetigo is one among those most common bacterial infections, which mainly affects children and also infants.

These bacterial skin infections usually appear on the skin, particularly around the nose and mouth of your child.

Impetigo usually starts as a red sore, which can quickly grow into pimple [Treating Pimples] or acne [Baby acne]and ruptures and also starts oozing within few days. After that it starts forming yellowish brown crust which looks like a brown sugar.

Be aware! Impetigo is highly contagious.

This bacterial skin infection can cause severe itchiness on the infected skin and also highly contagious. Scratching or even touching the sores of the infection is quite sufficient for the bacteria to spread on to the other parts of your body and also to other people.

Though this impetigo commonly occurs whenever the bacteria enter into the skin of your child through insect bites or cuts, it can also be developed in children with perfect healthy skin.

Smallpox is one of the most contagious diseases caused by variola virus, which has been completely wiped out throughout the world.

It was also potentially one of the most devastating and disfiguring biological weapon that have killed almost 300 million people in 20th century alone.

The early signs and symptoms of smallpox, which you can notice after two weeks of infection resembles like those of flu. You can suffer with fever, fatigue and head ache if you are affected with this viral infection.

Later when the infection develops, it causes severe pus filled blisters on your skin. These blisters eventually leave deep, pitted scars [Treating scars] on your skin. Once when the symptoms reaches advanced stage, there is no cure or effective treatment for small pox.

Variola virus is the main culprit!

Variola virus is the main source for the infection to take place. When you are infected with this variola virus, initially this virus starts replicating inside your body cells, primarily in lymph nodes and then in your spleen and bone marrow.

World Tuberculosis day is on March 24th. Each year, this day is celebrated to raise awareness about the threat presented by tuberculosis around the world. Many people believe that Tuberculosis is a disease of past and there is no threat for us today.

The reason for this belief is in United States, the TB occurrence is declining. However, Tuberculosis is one of the deadliest diseases in the world. Although, tuberculosis can be treated with medications and proper medical care, it still takes life of 2 million people approximately every year.

World Tuberculosis day 2008 is about celebrating the lives and stories of people affected by TB: men, women and children who have taken tuberculosis treatment; doctors, researchers, nurses; community workers – any one who helped towards the global fight against tuberculosis.

While it is a disease associated with poverty, close living and working conditions, anyone can contract tuberculosis, whether male or female, rich or poor, young or old. Once the person is affected with TB, it places burden not only on that person, but also on family, friends, community and society.

Avian flu, most commonly known as bird flu is potentially a dangerous infection which spreads rapidly and can lead the infected persons to death.

Most of you might be worrying about how to fight against this dreadful virus.

Certain important facts which can be helpful for you are given here. Try to know these basic facts about avian flu.

Avian flu is the mostly caused due to viral infection, which usually infects only birds and some times it also infects pigs. There are many different harmful effects of this avian flu.

Some of them can show only mild effects on birds and causes raffling of feathers and reduces the production of eggs in them, while some of them including H5 strains are more dreadful and can be responsible for serious inflammation.

How this virus is spread?

Most of the researchers believe that, avian flu spreads from one bird to another, when an infected bird comes in contact with the other healthy bird.

Certain migrating birds like ducks, swans and also geese carry and transmit virus to other healthier birds. This virus does not cause any harm to migrating birds but it uses these birds as a source of transmission.

Did you notice any rash on the skin of your foot? Then it can be an athlete’s foot, the most common fungal infection.

This fungal infection easily spreads in public places like communal showers and fitness centers etc. Athlete’s foot often affects the spaces between your toes.

Although, this fungal infection is most often in teens and young kids, it is also possible in women and other persons who have sweaty and damp feet. Walking with bare foot in public places can trigger this fungal infection.

You can identify this fungal infection with following manifestations:

• Athlete’s foot is often associated with peeling of skin with cracked blisters in certain areas on your foot.
• Your feet can smell with some unpleasant odor and the skin can look cheesy on the infected parts of the skin.
• Identify the skin rash that spreads inside or in step part of your foot.
• It can also be identified with redness and scaly skin on the sole of feet.
• You can notice raw skin, when you scratch the suspected areas on the skin.

Simple ways to get rid of athlete’s foot:

If athlete’s foot is left untreated, then this fungal infection creates an environment for secondary bacterial infection, which can make the condition complicated.

There are some diseases that create fear in the heart. In that, leprosy is one disease.

Although this is in the way of withdrawing stage, the stigma, fear, and the isolation associated with this condition is proven to be more damaging than the disease itself.

Even individuals who are cured with leprosy fear to speak about it because they are scared of the discrimination. Even though many are being cured, many people are still isolated.

Leprosy is caused by a slow-growing bacterium called Mycobacterium leprae and it is not extremely contagious. The mechanism of transmission of this disease is not known.

According to the reports from 109 countries, during the past five years, the number of new detected cases of leprosy has continued to decrease dramatically at an average rate of 20% per year.

Know different types of leprosy!

The leprosy is classified as paucibacillary (tuberculoid leprosy) and multibacillary Hansen’s disease (lepromatous leprosy) or borderline leprosy.

Borderline leprosy (multibacillary leprosy) of intermediate severity is the most common form of this disease.

In this type, skin lesions look like tuberculoid leprosy, but these lesions are numerous and irregular with large patches, which affects the whole limb. It also involves the peripheral nerves causing severe weakness and loss of sensation.

Are you pregnant? Are you aware of hepatitis B? It is very essential for a pregnant woman to know more about hepatitis B.

This is the most serious infection of liver which can be transmitted from mother to a new born baby through umbilical cord.

Hepatitis B mainly infects your liver and if left untreated, it can result in severe damage to your liver. Most of the cases with this hepatitis virus can be recovered on their own, however about 15% to 20% of the infected persons die with major damage to liver.

Why hepatitis B virus is dangerous for pregnant women?

If you have Hepatitis B virus (HBV) in your blood, then there are chances for you to pass it to your unborn baby which is very dangerous. Most of the babies with this kind of infection will be more prone to HBV infections throughout their lives.

In the initial stages of the hepatitis B infection, it might not show any kind of sickness, but as it grows gradually, it can lead to severe liver damages. Almost 25 percent of the HBV infected babies can die due to liver diseases.

Dengue fever is the most common disease in the regions of tropical and subtropical regions of the world.

Now it has become the most common disease in all humans caused due to arboviral infection. This infection mainly spreads by the bite of an Aedes mosquito.

This mosquito usually transmits the infection by biting an infected person and then biting some other individual without infection.

Dengue fever is associated with certain abnormal health conditions:

Dengue fever is mainly caused by a group or family of viruses which are usually transmitted by mosquitoes. It is considered as an acute infection which is associated with sudden onset of illness followed by head ache, severe pain in your muscles and joints and also swollen glands.

If you are infected with the virus responsible for dengue fever, then you can also experience rashes on your skin for three to four days.

Most of the infections of dengue results in comparatively very mild illness but some times you have chances to get infected with dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF).

Due to this dengue hemorrhagic fever, your blood vessels starts to leak and leads to bleeding of your nose, mouth and also bleeding of gums in your mouth.