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Cholera

Cholera, or Vibrio Cholerae, is a rod shaped bacteria that is transmitted through water and food. V. Cholerae produces cholera toxin, which causes the severe diarrhea that is a symptom of Cholera. If Cholera is not treated promptly, than death by dehydration can quickly occur.

 Characteristics of Bacteria:
Vibrio Cholerae  is a rod shaped bacteria with flagella that, when it reaches the small intestine, causes severe disease. Most of the bacteria does not survive for long inside the human body, but the cells that do survive long enough to travel through the small intestine to the intestinal wall do so by shutting down protein production while they travel through the highly acidic stomach fluids. The bacteria create flagella to help them swim through the thick mucus of the small intestine. Once the bacteria reaches the intestinal wall, it begins to produce the the toxic proteins that make up the cholera toxin.

Cholera:

When the bacteria reaches the intestinal wall, it begins to create cholera toxin, which leads to the main symptom of extreme diarrhea. This happens because the cholera toxin activates a certain enzyme in the intestinal cells, and changes there function so that they extract water as well as electrolytes from the tissues and the blood and force it in to the open space inside the small intestine. All of this fluid proceeds to come out of the body as diarrhea. Paired with this extreme loss of fluids is dehydration, urine failure (anuria), an increased acidity in the blood (acidosis), and circulatory shock, which occurs when blood is not able to provide nutrients to tissues quickly enough. Circulatory shock can lead to cardiac arrest or hypoxemia. Teh diarrhea also carries many ions, and the loss of ions, particularly potassium ions, can lead to heart failure as well as circulatory failure. Due to all of these critical symptoms, untreated Cholera has a 50-60% mortality rate.

Treatment:
If Cholera is diagnosed quickly, it can easily be cured by quickly administering fluid either intravenously, or orally if glucose is added. Due to Cholera's simple treatment, the mortality rate stays fairly low for such a quick killing disease. Cholera is really dangerous in less developed countries where sewage is not adequately treated and Cholera can travel extremely quickly. Many of these countries also lack the resources to perform the simple treatment.

Sources:
Image 1: http://www.topnews.in/health/general/health-news?page=10
Image 2: http://www.dr-evans.com/advancedbiology/cholera.html
http://www.textbookofbacteriology.net/cholera.html
http://www.cdc.gov/nczved/divisions/dfbmd/diseases/cholera/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera

Macromolecule Lab: Lemons

This past Tuesday, I worked without a lab partner to determine the presence of different macromolecules inside lemons. We as a class used four different indicator tests to see if glucose, proteins, starch, or lipids were present in each designated food. The first test performed was for protein, and was performed by adding en drops of Biuret's solution to five mL of the food. If the result was a brown color, then the food had protein; however, my lemon juice did not change color and it was clear that no protein was present. The second test, which was for glucose, required three mL of Benedict's solution to be added to five mL of the food, and then that mixture had to be heated for five minutes. If, when the mixture ws heated, a very obvious color change to a bright orange occurred, then glucose was present. When I added the Benedict's solution to the lemon juice, it instantly started bubbling upwards, almost to the top of the test tube. This reaction was due to the acidity of lemon, which caused the solution to react. However, when I heated the mixture after the bubble had settled, no color change occurred whatsoever. With this in mind, glucose is probably present in lemon. The acidity of the lemon most likely caused inaccurate results. According to this website, the presence of glucose in lemon is not listed, but in one cup of raw lemon juice, 5.9 grams of sugars are present. Odds are that glucose makes up part of those 5.9 g. The next test performed was for starch, and called for 5 drops of Lugol's solution to be added to 5 mL of the food and if the result was a dark black color, then starch was present. I decided that my color was a dark brown, but not the dark black that starch indicates. According to the same website, starch data is also unavailable, and this may also be due to the acidity, or it could be due to a misreading on my part. I could have decided that a positive test was negative, not believing the brown to be dark enough to be a positive indicator. The final test was for lipids, and required the food to be rubbed on a brown piece of paper towel and hung up to dry. When dry, a positive read would have a shiny or glossy look. My lemon test was not shiny at all, and this makes sense, as the website I mentioned before states that no fat is present in raw lemon juice. While my results may have been tainted and not 100% reliable, I believe that glucose and starch are present in lemon, and that protein and lipids are not.