Childhood Diseases

Diseases can be devastating for anyone, but it seems particularly unfair when they attack children. Unfortunately, many diseases seem to take a special interest in the young, infecting them more frequently and vigorously than they do adults.

In this section, you will learn about several common childhood diseases, and why some diseases seem to prey on the young. It's not all gloom and doom, though, for researchers have made great strides in controlling many childhood diseases. Vaccines, in particular, have saved thousands of young lives, and with proper use they will continue to do so.
Why the Young?

Children are more susceptible to diseases for a number of reasons. The major reason for children's increased susceptibility is that they have had limited exposure to diseases and therefore haven't yet built the immunologic defenses required to fend off certain diseases. The environment plays an important role as well. Children in day care centers and in school pass infections around and then take them home and pass them to siblings and parents. This is a cycle that is difficult to break. Children also don't always practice good hygiene and that makes them both susceptible to as well as good transmitters of disease.

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Mosquito and Tick-Borne Diseases

Mosquitoes serve as vectors, or carriers, of the malaria parasite. Bloodthirsty mosquitoes and ticks also carry disease-causing bacteria and viruses, which can be passed on to people when they are bitten by the bugs. And unlike malaria, which isn't endemic to the United States, these other mosquito- and tick-borne diseases are sometimes found in our own backyards.

This section covers three mosquito-borne diseases and two tick-borne diseases. The first two, yellow fever and dengue, are also called hemorrhagic fevers, because one of their symptoms is small hemorrhages under the skin. Diseases like Lyme are spread by ticks, while West Nile is spread by mosquitoes. West Nile doesn't cause many infections but it has caused a great deal of panic due to heavy media attention in the United States.

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Food-Borne Diseases

In 1993 in Seattle, Washington, several school-aged children became ill, suffering from diarrhea and stomach cramps. This was no flu outbreak, though. Epidemiologists determined that the cause of the illness was a bacterium called E. coli 0157:H7. The children had all eaten infected hamburgers at the same Jack in the Box restaurant. Overall, 500 people in the Pacific Northwest got E. coli 0157:H7 infections that year, and three of the children from the Seattle outbreak died.

The CDC used DNA fingerprinting to track the bacteria and link the illnesses in people to undercooked hamburger patties from a Jack in the Box restaurant. Hamburgers from the restaurant were recalled, preventing further illness.

The Jack in the Box incident got a lot of media attention because of the number of children who got sick and because the source of the infection was a large chain restaurant. However, such food-borne illnesses are common throughout the world, and the incidents rarely ever get media attention.

Many different bacteria—all of them with complicated-sounding names—are responsible for causing food-borne diseases. In this section you'll read about six of the most common bacteria. Fortunately, most food-borne illnesses don't last long and aren't very dangerous, but there are cases where there are possible serious long-term effects, which we'll address, too.

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Rare and Deadly Diseases

The media loves a good story—one that's full of gory or otherwise disturbing details and that preys upon people's fears. Outbreaks of diseases such as Ebola, Marburg, and mad cow fit this bill perfectly.

Whereas tuberculosis and hepatitis, diseases that cause far more deaths and sicknesses, rarely get a headline, a single outbreak of any of the diseases discussed in this section will almost always make the front page of your local daily and get a mention (with lots of frightening footage) on the nightly news.

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Tropical Diseases

Many diseases are caused by organisms that thrive in tropical climates or live inside flies that are common in the tropics. Many of these so-called “tropical diseases” are treatable; however, developing countries don't always have access to the medications they need to treat them. Consequently, many people unnecessarily suffer and even die from tropical diseases.

In this section, you will find out about some of the most common tropical diseases, their treatment, and how to prevent them.

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Sexually Transmitted Diseases

In This Section

    * The most common sexually transmitted diseases
    * Symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment
    * How to limit the risk for developing an STD
    * What to do if you think you have an STD

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), formerly referred to as “venereal diseases,” are among the most common infectious diseases in the world. Amazingly, an estimated 333 million new cases of curable sexually transmitted diseases occur each year among adults. The United States has the highest rate of STDs in the industrialized world, exceeding other nations by 50 to 100 times.

These diseases exert a high emotional toll on afflicted individuals, as well as an economic burden on our healthcare system. More than 20 STDs including chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, genital warts, genital herpes, and viral hepatitis have now been identified as affecting men and women of all backgrounds and economic levels.
Our Current Situation

There are an estimated 15.3 million new cases of STDs in the United States each year, 3 million of which occur in people between the ages of 13 and 19. Nearly two thirds of all STDs occur in people younger than 25! The incidence of STDs is rising partly because people have become sexually active earlier, with more frequent sex partners. Many STDs cause no symptoms, and those that do may be confused with other diseases not transmitted through sexual contact. An infected person, whether he or she has symptoms or not, may transmit an STD to a sex partner. For this reason, periodic screening is recommended for individuals with multiple sex partners.

STDs tend to be more severe for women than for men. In some cases, STDs may spread to the uterus and fallopian tubes, causing pelvic inflammatory disease, a major cause of both infertility and ectopic pregnancy (when the embryo grows in the fallopian tube instead of the uterus). STDs in women are also associated with some cervical cancer. STDs can be passed from a mother to baby before, during, or immediately after birth.

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he good news is, however, that when diagnosed and treated early, many STDs can be managed effectively or cured.
Reducing the Chance of Infection

The only completely effective means of protection against STD infection is to abstain from sexual intercourse. For most of the sexually active world, this is an impractical solution.

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So for those people engaging in intercourse, the best way to minimize risk is to …

    * Have a mutually monogamous sexual relationship with an uninfected partner.
    * Use barrier methods of contraception, such as condoms.
    * Avoid anal intercourse.
    * Delay having sexual relations as long as possible, as young people tend to be more susceptible to infections.
    * Keep the total number of sex partners at a minimum.
    * Have regular checkups even in the absence of STD symptoms.

If an STD infection is suspected, a doctor should be consulted. Information is readily available from local health departments, as well as from STD and family planning clinics.

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Tuberculosis

In an age when we believe that we have the tools to conquer most diseases, the ancient scourge of tuberculosis (TB) still causes 2 million deaths a year worldwide—more than any other single infectious organism—reminding us that we still have a long way to go. Even equipped with drugs to treat TB effectively, we haven't managed to eradicate this deadly infection.

What is the history of tuberculosis? And how has it managed to survive for so long? This section will answer these questions, plus describe the symptoms and treatment options available for TB.
An Ancient Scourge That Still Kills Today

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Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, has been around for centuries. Recently, fragments of the spinal columns from Egyptian mummies from 2400 B.C.E. were found to have definite signs of the ravages of this terrible disease. Also called consumption, TB was identified as the most widespread disease in ancient Greece, where it was almost always fatal. But it wasn't until centuries later that the first descriptions of the disease began to appear. Starting in the late seventeenth century, physicians began to identify changes in the lungs common in all consumptive, or TB, patients. At the same time, the earliest references to the fact that the disease was infectious began to appear.

In 1720, the English doctor Benjamin Marten was the first to state that TB could be caused by “wonderfully minute living creatures.” He went further to say that it was likely that ongoing contact with a consumptive patient could cause a healthy person to get sick. Although Marten's findings didn't help to cure TB, they did help people to better understand the disease.

The sanitorium, which was introduced in the mid-nineteenth century, was the first positive step to contain TB. Hermann Brehmer, a Silesian botany student who had TB, was told by his doctor to find a healthy climate. He moved to the Himalayas and continued his studies. He survived his bout with the illness, and after he received his doctorate, built an institution in Gorbersdorf, where TB patients could come to recuperate. They received good nutrition and were outside in fresh air most of the day. This became the model for the development of sanitoria around the world.

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In 1865, French military doctor Jean-Antoine Villemin demonstrated that TB could be passed from people to cattle and from cattle to rabbits. In 1882, Robert Koch discovered a staining technique that allowed him to see the bacteria that cause TB under a microscope.

Until the introduction of surgical techniques to remove infected tissue and the development of x-rays to monitor the disease, doctors didn't have great tools to treat TB. TB patients could be isolated, which helped reduce the spread of the disease, but treating it remained a challenge.

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