![]() ![]() If left untreated, advcanced signs may develop, including: Eye problems that may lead to blindness.Painless swelling or lumps on the face or earlobes.The CDC says symptoms of leprosy to the skin include: It takes time to develop signs of the disease due to the slow-growing nature of the bacteria. "The problem is the armadillos that acquired leprosy many, may years ago back when we had a leprosy colony in Carville, Louisiana, and those armadillos have slowly moved - well, they've spread all over Texas and Louisiana, and then they've come over to Central Florida, so we're seeing cases there as well." Leprosy symptoms She also pointed to the role of the armadillos. "The problem here in the United States is partly people with leprosy coming here from other places," Marty said. She also said there are several reasons cases appear to be on the rise. "It's only about 10% of people who can get leprosy, and it's a whole spectrum of how the disease may manifest," she said. Aileen Marty, an infectious diseases specialist at Florida International University, told CBS Miami. "Prolonged, close contact with someone with untreated leprosy over many months is needed to catch the disease."įortunately, about 90% of people "tend to be naturally immune," Dr. Scientists currently think it may happen when a person with Hansen's disease coughs or sneezes, and a healthy person breathes in the droplets containing the bacteria," the organization's website reads. ![]() "It is not known exactly how Hansen's disease spreads between people. Leprosy is typically spread through extended close contact with an untreated infected person.Ĭasual contact does not lead to infection - you can't catch leprosy from shaking hands, hugging or sitting next to someone during a meal or on the bus, the CDC states. In the United States, about 150 people get infected annually, according to the CDC. ![]() The World Health Organization says more than 200,000 new cases are reported every year in more than 120 countries, with the largest numbers in Brazil, India and Indonesia. "Those suffering from it are isolated and discriminated against in many places where the disease is seen," the CDC notes. Lastly, while insects do gain some level of aggression when infected, they normally do not attack other insects.Still, stigma around the disease remains. All 600 species of Cordyceps which seize control of insect bodies do so to force the host into a humid place where the fungus can feed on the body and spread its spores, so if an evolved cordyceps infected a human and over the course of many days transformed the body into a shambling host, the fungus' end goal would be much the same. Even if it did, fungal infections are slow, taking a matter of weeks, and nothing like the near-instant transformation depicted new filaments take some time and energy to produce. Human brains contain hundreds of thousands of times more neurons compared to an ant brain, and it would be an extraordinarily rapid evolution for cordyceps to gain the ability to infect and take over one. Overall, the probability of a fungus of this type evolving the need and capability to infect humans is astronomically small. As with the game, the series' depiction of the cordyceps fungus has some inaccuracies. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |