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