Airborne Diseases
This airborne pathogen is known to have fragmenting hypha and arthrospores. The disease is called Valley Fever, San Joaquin Fever, or Desert Rheumatism. What is the causative agent?
Coccidioidomycosis.
What is the pathogen's genus that causes malaria?
Plasmodium.
What are the three forms of Leishmaniasis infection?
Cutaneous, Mucocutaneous, and Visceral.
What is the causative agent of African Sleeping Sickness and Chagas disease?
Trypanosomes that are observable in blood, spinal fluid, or a skin biopsy.
What are the two lifecycle stages of Giardiasis that cause clinical symptoms?
Giardiasis cysts and trophozoites. They interfere with nutrient absorption.
You are a physician investigating a clinical case of Coccidioidomycosis. What are some ways you can identify the pathogen? What are some concerns regarding the pathogens' tissue tropism?
Identification of the spherules. It can spread to every organ.
How is Plasmodium spread to other uninfected individuals?
It is an arbovirus, specifically using the female anopheles mosquito. A mosquito has to feed on an infected person to get a blood meal.
How would a physician diagnose a case of leishmaniasis?
Observation of protozoa within infected macrophages.
What are the two vectors that transmit the diseases?
Tsetse flies or kissing bugs. The reservoirs include domestic cattle and wild animals.
How is Giardia intestinalis transmitted?
Usually through cyst-contaminated water.
However, there are reservoirs that include household pets and livestock.
As a CDC agent investigating the Mississippi, Ohio and Rio Grande River basins for recent data on endemic pathogens, what microbe would catch your attention?
Histoplasma capsulatum.
What is the general lifecycle of the plasmodial protist?
Sporozoite injected with mosquito bite.
Replicates as merozoite in hepatic cells.
Released, enters erythrocytes and replicates.
Lysis of erythrocytes correlates with fever.
What are common themes found between the prevention of these parasites and malaria?
Antiparasitic drugs, vector control, and reservoir control. Additionally, epidemiological surveillance to manage case control.
Why would a vaccine be pointless/not useful against African Sleeping Sickness?
Antigenic variation makes it the antibodies and immune cell responders unable to recognize the new sites.
What are the clinical manifestations of Giardiasis?
Clinical manifestations include severe diarrhea, epigastric pain, anorexia. Additionally, chronic gastritis can occur.
A public health agent recently made comments to wear masks in the Rio Grande Basins, why would they suggest this type of PPE?
The pathogen is spread through airborne pathogens, meaning you should wear equipment that prevents the inhalation of the microbes.
A physician wants to identify common symptoms and clinical manifestations of malaria. What are they?
A critical identification are periodic attacks of chills and fevers. Anemia and spleen/liver hypertrophy.
Malnutrition, displacement, poor housing, discrimination. Leishmaniasis leads to disfigurements.
What are the clinical manifestations of African Sleeping Sickness?
Interstitial inflammation and necrosis within the lymph nodes. It leads to lethargy.
What domesticated animal is required for the completion of the Toxoplasma gondii lifecycle?
Cats.
What are some differences between Coccidioidomycosis and Histoplasmosis regarding their prevalence and severity?
Most infections of Coccidioidomycosis are asymptomatic whereas more deaths are reported by Histoplamsosis. So, one is more severe than the other.
Antimalarial drugs, netting, and insecticide, as well as a new recombinant vaccines.
What cell do promastigotes infect?
Macrophages.
The acute disease has rapid onset and the trypanosomes moves through the bloodstream to become amastigotes.
The chronic disease is asymptomatic and the amastigotes reach the heart and gastrointestinal cells.
What are some of the clinical symptoms of toxoplasmosis?
They usually are either asymptomatic, resemble mononucleosis, encephalitis, and even congenital defects in newborn babies.