MYCOBACTERIUM LEPRAEBy Brayden weir

What is it?

Leprosy is a bacterial infection that causes skin sore, nerve damage, and muscle weakness. It also gets worse over time.

Modus Operandi

Leprosy isn’t very contagious, it cannot spread sexually, it spreads primarily by untreated infected people coughing and sneezing.

Leprosy attacks the nerves in a person’s hands and feet. Often causing numbness, and ultimately causing the fingers and toes to curl. Also it goes for the nerves in the eyes, which will compromise the ability to blink, which can cause blindness and infections.

Victims

Victims are primarily humans, which is a bummer.

Where in the world?

Leprosy is mostly found in the tropics and subtropics.

Injuries

The main effect of the disease is numbness of the fingers, toes, eyes, and nasal cavities.

Most common and most painful effect are major skin sores

Dangerous? I think not

With modern medicine we are able to treat victims of leprosy and prevent any major damage that would normally happen.

However, we cannot get rid of the disease once a person already has it

Show me the numbers!

Worldwide it is estimated that there are about 6.5 million people infected with leprosy.

3.5 million are in India alone

Treatment

First and foremost, there are a few antibacterial medications available for preliminary treatments.

Second, there is a thing called Oral Corticosteroids, which helps prevent nerve damage by reducing swelling

And last of all, surgery to drain certain areas and to fix nerve damage.

How does it do what it does? Scientist cannot grow M. leprae in a lab,

which suggests that it is now a true parasite, because it relies upon its host to provide its necessary nutritional needs

M. leprae replicates remarkably slow, considering it’s a bacteria cell, replicating once every 14 days, which is why it has such a long incubation period of around 2 years before it presents itself in its human host. Scientists believe this is due to its destructive nature.

Anything else?

Leprosy has been around since biblical times, and it doesn’t appear to be leaving anytime soon

It has an elongated shape. It has an open reading frame of

about 1000 bp, while its genome is around 3000 bp

Bibliography

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002323/

http://rarediseases.about.com/cs/infectiousdisease/a/071203.htm

http://dermnetnz.org/bacterial/leprosy.html

http://www.webspawner.com/users/prashan/

http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Mycobacterium