The Amoeba That Eats Human Intestines, Cell By Cell 71
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Entamoeba histolytica is a tiny pathogen that takes a terrible toll. The single-celled parasite—an amoeba about a tenth the size of a dust mite—infects 50 million people worldwide and kills as many as 100,000 each year. Now, a new report reveals how the microbe does its deadly damage: by eating cells alive, piece by piece. The finding offers a potential target for new drugs to treat E. histolytica infections, and it transforms researchers' understanding of how the parasite works."
Re:treatment (Score:5, Interesting)
The researchers did experimentally disrupt this process(once with a drug, in a second case with a genetically crippled ameoba strain) as part of demonstrating that the 'nibbling' was the mechanism behind human cell death(which can apparently cause some ghastly intestinal trouble [wikimedia.org]), so presumably there is some hope that we'll be able to weaponize the mode of attack they used, and get an elegant, selective, unlikely-to-interfere-with-other-eukaryotes-like-the-patient, drug that will prevent the horrible-death-by-intestinal-nibbling; but nothing in pill form just yet, certainly not that you could just go shoving into patients without killing some little fuzzy animals first.
(Also, if Malaria is anything to go by, the statistical answer to 'how do you treat it?' is 'On average, you don't. Protozoa are tough motherfuckers and it mostly just kills poor people in ghastly countries anyway. Let's go find a cure for hair loss and midlife limp-dick syndrome...')
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They had a show on tv called 'Monsters Inside Me' the show is about parasites that invade the human body. They also show how doctors seem to fail, or use their educated minds keep the diagnosis simple. They also show or describe the treatment.. And it is what you'd expect just use antibiotics, or antiprotozoal drugs.
Sarcasm, what could possible go wrong with that? History tells us something but we continue to go ahead with using those drugs.
Something that should be universal in health care are running test
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Well, parasites have become the zebras of today's medical zoo. While it was very common in the good ol' days of yore when it was pretty much a given that you'd have some sort of parasites in you (quite literally to the point where it was a surefire way to tell that something's wrong with you if you did NOT have the "normal" collection of parasites in you), parasites have become something rather rare in our highly sterilized world with through screening of food and other stuff that we put on or into us. Hell
Seriously? (Score:2)
Often, the tests for intestinal parasites (usually from a series of stool samples) don't actually work. While false positives are rare, false negatives are quite common.
Given that cancer is usually an actual tumor (or, at the least, something that is blindingly obvious on a microscope slide), the odds of getting treated for cancer when you really had a parasite is pretty much zero.
And likewise, the flu has pretty distinctive symptoms (and a somewhat reliable test) that you are unlikely to be treated for in
Re:treatment (Score:5, Funny)
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(Also, if Malaria is anything to go by, the statistical answer to 'how do you treat it?' is 'On average, you don't.
The statistical answer is drain the swamps, kill the mosquitoes, and malaria goes away. There's a reason malaria no longer has a presence in the developed world and it's not because nobody cared about it.
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But isn't "draining the swamps" now called "wetlands destruction", so people don't want to do it?
not anymore (Score:3)
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The normal approach to parasitic treatment is to give patient drugs that are highly toxic to the parasite and much less so to the host.
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Be like a first-worlder, and have less tasty intestines.
What's eating Gilbert Grape? (Score:1)
I for one... nevermind (Score:2)
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He isn't a leftist, he's a troll.
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how absurd.
the poor and 'non whites' are the ones who mow the lawns, clean the houses, cook their food, change their oil, etc.
they NEED a sub-class around to SERVE them. the sub-class dying out is a nightmare to the ultra rich.
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Besides, how can you know you are rich if you don't have some poor people for comparison?
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You nuts? If all the serfs die out, you'd have to WORK again!
-heave- (Score:1)
infects 50 million, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Infects 50 million and kills 100000... I'll take those odds. Better than driving to work for a year.
Re:infects 50 million, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:infects 50 million, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
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Oh and I forgot, at least one treatment for it, Flagyl, actually makes you feel worse. But at least then you're done and can stop taking it.
As a bonus, while you're on Flagyl you can't even drink to forget your problems.
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Oh and I forgot, at least one treatment for it, Flagyl, actually makes you feel worse. But at least then you're done and can stop taking it.
As a bonus, while you're on Flagyl you can't even drink to forget your problems.
That's ok, you won't want to, as you'll be too busy moaning that you're dying already, provided it doesn't kill you. That is one of the "side effects" [webmd.com] not listed there but was on the bottle I saw that you should immediately contact your physician for...
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It saps all your energy and makes you poop blood.
Sounds just like my last car.
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Apparently he acquired the infection when drinking stream water while hunting for food for his family sometime during the 1920s. There was no effective treatment back then, so he just suffered.
Not particularly something to have fun with.
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Re:infects 50 million, eh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Kills 100,000 *per year.* So, each year it kills 1 in 500 people that have it. That's very roughly a mortality rate of over 10% (rough math: of 500 people that have it now, approximately 50 of them will be dead from this after 50 years, and approximately 400 of them will be dead from other causes (with about 50 still alive)).
Much less than 10% of the people who decide to drive to work during the course of their lifetimes are killed by driving to work.
In the US in 1972, there were about 200 million people, and about 50 thousand of them died in traffic fatalities (about 2.5% of all US deaths that year). This was the worst year for traffic fatalities by volume and the eighth worst by percent. Let's say that roughly one quarter of the people in the US at the time displayed the symptoms of "driving to work" that year. Even if we presume that all of the traffic fatalities that occurred that year were due to driving to work, that's still a mortality of half of this mortality rate. We would need to suggest that only 1/8 of the population of the US drove to work that year to get to the same mortality rate as this pathogen.
And that's the worst year for traffic fatalities in US history. Since then, our population has increased 50%, and traffic fatalities have decreased 40%. And once again, this is all using a worst case scenario of every traffic fatality being caused by driving to work, rather than driving for any other reason.
So no, having this pathogen is *not* better than driving to work...these are not odds you would take.
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Oblig xkcd:
http://xkcd.com/558/ [xkcd.com]
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I believe a better car analogy to make your point would be, x number of people get in car accidents and y die as a result. Your analogy of comparing the ratio of drivers to driving deaths is missing a step.
In this case the rate of infection is .7% for the entire world. The chance of death is .0014%. This does not even take into account first world healthcare. With your analogy, using your numbers, the death rate by car accidents in the current year is .01%. Driving to work is seven times more deadly than th
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I had this (stayed in some slums in tropical areas where the water supply comes from a deep-well 5 meters down, meanwhile the toilet buries the shit in sand 2 meters down. . . so shit has 3 meters to turn back into water. . . usually this works surprisingly well!).
Anyway, treated it goes away fairly quickly, even with the current non-specific medicines (though these are powerful antibiotics and will wipe out *all* of the good stuff with the bad. . . this can have serious consequences for some).
Untreated, y
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If you risk infection in the course of activities you have to undertake, like driving to work, then fine. But I for one would not choose to subject my self to a risk of .2% through infection by this flesh munching turd monster. And if infected I would rather take a course of pills to erradicate it from my body, even if there were transient side effects such as explosive diarrhea.
How? (Score:1)
This is unique? How else do microbes make a living? Amway sales?
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many merely coexist with you, eating nutrients carried about by your precious fluids.
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Re:Wonder what's worse? (Score:4, Funny)
That's like asking what's worse, Parkinson or Alzheimer. Does it really matter whether you spill your beer or whether you forgot where you put it?
What's eating you? (Score:4, Funny)
What's eating you?
E. histolytica!
Eats Human Intestines, Cell By Cell (Score:2)
Eating fat (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing to look out for (Score:2)
Some human strains may have adapted to this and need it to be healthy.
We already have a similar adaption to worm parasites and without a worm infection those people suffer until they get one.
The only question that remains (Score:2)
Did they manage to infect Madagascar and Greenland?