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Human physiology, hazards and health risks
Published in Stephen Battersby, Clay's Handbook of Environmental Health, 2016
David J. Baker, Naima Bradley, Alec Dobney, Virginia Murray, Jill R. Meara, John O’Hagan, Neil P. McColl, Caryn L. Cox
Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae. The disease occurs in almost all tropical and warm temperate countries but there are only a few pockets of hyperendemic disease occurrence in Africa, Asia and South America. The disease mainly affects the skin and peripheral nerves causing localised or extensive damage that can result in deformation and disability. Diagnosis is mainly by careful clinical examination. Laboratory diagnosis involves identifying the organism in skin smears or biopsy material. Treatment is with long-term multidrug antimicrobial therapy. Supportive care and rehabilitation are also important components of leprosy management.
Human physiology, hazards and health risks
Published in Stephen Battersby, Clay's Handbook of Environmental Health, 2023
Revati Phalkey, Naima Bradley, Alec Dobney, Virginia Murray, John O’Hagan, Mutahir Ahmad, Darren Addison, Tracy Gooding, Timothy W Gant, Emma L Marczylo, Caryn L Cox
Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae. The disease occurs in almost all tropical and warm temperate countries with several countries but there are only a few pockets of hyperendemic disease occurrence in Africa, Asia and South America. The disease mainly affects the skin and peripheral nerves causing localised or extensive damage that can result in deformation and disability. Diagnosis is mainly by careful clinical examination. Laboratory diagnosis involves identifying the organism in skin smears or biopsy material. Treatment is with long-term multidrug antimicrobial therapy. Supportive care and rehabilitation are also important components of leprosy management.
Exposure characteristics of airborne bacteria during a haze pollution event at Qinling Mountain, China
Published in Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal, 2019
Rui Lu, Chunlan Fan, Pengxia Liu, Yuzhen Qi, Feifei Mu, Zhengsheng Xie, John Kerr White, Anne Mette Madsen, Yanpeng Li
Several potential pathogenic bacteria and opportunistic pathogens (Gou et al. 2016; Liu et al. 2018) at the genus level were also detected in this research (Table 3). Based on the average relative abundance of these potential pathogens, their dominance followed the order of Bacillus (28.78%), Pseudomonas (16.33%), Streptococcus (0.41%), Burkholderia (0.39%), Enterococcus (0.21%), Acinetobacter (0.075%), Clostridium (0.026%), Staphylococcus (0.025%), Mycobacterium (0.017%), Serratia (0.016%), Corynebacterium (0.014%), Micrococcus (0.010%), Delftia (0.007%), Enterobacter (0.006%), and Stenotrophomonas (0.004%). It is worth noting that Vibrio, Legionella, Haemophilus, and Nocardia which were detected in Hangzhou (Liu et al. 2018) were not detected in this study. Neisseria, which can cause cerebrospinal meningitis, was also found in Xi'an (Li et al. 2015) but its relative abundance of it was almost zero in this study. Du et al. (2018) found some pathogens were higher in the suburban area than in the urban area of Beijing. These differences could be attributed to the differences in the sources of samples, mainly between urban and mountain environment. The samples were also collected at different sampling time and also could have caused various ongoing epidemic diseases related to the season when the airborne microbes were collected from the different regions. Although these microbial genera relative abundances in the air samples were far lower than other dominant genera, they can still affect the human health through respiratory tract infections (Bertolini et al. 2013). For example, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae, which are species of Mycobacterium, can cause tuberculosis and leprosy in humans, respectively (King et al. 2017). Govan and Deretic (1996) found respiratory infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Burkholderia cepacia play a major role in the pathogenesis of cystic fibrosis. Streptococcus pneumoniae is a leading cause of bacterial pneumonia, meningitis, and sepsis in children worldwide (O'Brien et al. 2009). Hence, more attention should be given to newborn babies and the elderly people during haze days (Liu et al. 2018).