Strep A

 What is Strep?

Streptococcus, also known as strep is a bacteria that is most commonly found in the mouth and throat. There are 4 main types of strep - A, B, C and G, which Strep A is the most common of all. Streptococcus Group A is rarely life-threatening. In most cases, it is healed in a one or two days with the help of antibiotics, but on rare occasions, they can get very dangerous. It can cause high fevers and muscle aches. In more severe cases, it even causes pneumonia, multi organ failures, heart problems, amputations, Necrotizing Fasciitis, STSS and death in a few hours. Approximately 12000 people get Strep A every year, and it kills up to 1600 patients per year.

What is Necrotizing Fasciitis?

Necrotizing Fasciitis (NF), commonly known as the flesh-eating disease is a severe infection that causes a rapid death of soft tissue. Usual symptoms are purple coloured dead skin and severe pain with fever. There are 4 types of NF. Type I is polymicrobial, Type II is monomicrobial, Type III is Marine Vibrio and Type IV is fungal. Type II is where Strep caused and MRSA caused NF lies.

What is STSS?

Streptococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome, or STSS is a rare complication of Strep with serious effects. STSS has to be treated with antibiotics in a hospital by a doctor, or else a patient can get shock and organ failure from STSS and die shortly after. Some may even need surgery and 30% to 70% of patients die after contracting STSS. However, even though anyone can get STSS, elders 65 and above or people with wounds are more likely to contract STSS with serious complications.

How do you catch strep?

Strep is very contagious. It is spread by airborne droplets, such as someone sneezing or coughing at another person, or someone touching an infected surface and then touching their face. 

Symptoms:

- Sore and Painful Throat

- Fever

- Swelling in Tonsils with redness, white patches and pus

- Swollen Lymph Nodes

- Red spots on roof of mouth

Consequences if left untreated:

If Strep is left untreated, it can cause lots of other problems, such as kidney inflammation, joint inflammations, rashes or even heart valve problems even though it can go away on its own in about a week.

Treatment:

Antibiotics are very useful during strep. Most doctors will prescribe it to decrease the time of healing.

Prevention:

- Sneeze or cough into a tissue or elbow

- Stay home if you're sick

- Wash or disinfect your hands

Sepsis

 What is Sepsis?

Sepsis is a rare but extremely fatal condition. It is your bodies' most extreme reaction to a bacterial infection. Sepsis usually starts mildly when an infection isn't treated properly or a few infections happen at once. As it is ignores, the case worsens, blood flow weakens and blood clots form, it can cause multiple organ failure and tissue death. Without treatment in time, it can worsen in no time and kill quickly. Even though most people recover from mild sepsis after being treated, if sepsis isn't treated, it will kill within 36 hours. The average mortality rate for sepsis is 40% and causes 270000 deaths per year, which is an even bigger killer than opiods, breast cancer and prostate cancer combined. Even if you survive a severe sepsis episode, you may be more vulnerable to future infections.

How do you catch Sepsis?

Sepsis happens when you don't treat your bacterial infection properly and it enters your bloodstream. After it enters your bloodstream, white blood cells and bacteria fight all around the body because the blood carries it to different organs, causing clots and leaky blood vessels. This causes inflammation all around the body and organs, which can cause tissue death and organ failure. The most common causes are from lung infections and urine tract infections.

Stages:

- Mild Sepsis: still recoverable, but has to be treat in time

- Severe Sepsis: organ damage, tissue dysfunction

- Septic Shock: organ damage and failure, tissue death (gangrene), hypotension

Symptoms:

Shivering, chills (above 38 degrees celcius or below 36 degrees celcius)

Extreme pain/discomfort (abnormal organ functions)

Pale

Sleepy, confused, disoriented

I feel like death

Short of breath

- No urination

- Rapid Pulse

- Low blood pressure and oxygen

Prevention:

Remember to treat your infections properly, and if you feel more than 2 warning signs of sepsis, go to a doctor immediately or call EMS. The earlier you get help, the faster and better you'll recover.

MRSA

 What is MRSA?

MRSA, or Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Superbug is a disease you've probably heard before, but never really knew what it is. MRSA is a staph(staphylococcaceae) bacterium superbug. Superbugs is an informal name for antibiotic resistant bacteria, and some examples of superbugs are MRSA or Drug-Resistant TB from the last blog post. Resistance is usually formed during evolution by the overuse of antibiotics. Because of its drug-resistance, MRSA is much harder to treat than other staph. A study shows that of 273 patients admitted for USA300 strain MRSA, 66 patients (24%) passed away. Out of the patients, 17.7% of the deaths occured within 30 days. In 2017 alone, it ended over 20000 lives and caused over 120000 bloodstream infections. 

What is Staph?

Staph, or staphylococcaceae is not to be confused with strep (streptococcus), which is a mouth or throat infection while staph is a skin infection. There are more than 30 types of staph, with MRSA being one of them.  

How do you catch MRSA?

MRSA usually spreads by skin-to-skin contact. This can be direct or indirect. If someone infected touches someone else, they can infect the other person with it, which is quite obvious, but another way it can transmit is by touching contaminated items. For instance, if someone infected uses gym equipment, and you use it, you have a chance to be infected.

Symptoms:

• Red swollen pusful bump/lumps (usually painful and warm to the touch)
• Fever
• Chills
• Cough
• Chest Pain
• Aches
• Organ Problems (Lungs, Joints, Heart, Bones...)

Consequences and if left untreated:

• Sepsis
• Impaired Lymphatic Functions
• Death

Risks:

• Hospitals (HA-MRSA Healthcare associated-MRSA)
• Hospitals-infections take up a great amount of MRSA cases
• Invasive devices put into you making wounds
• Community (CA-MRSA Community associated-MRSA)
• Exposed wounds
• Intravenous drugs 
• Unsanitary

Prevention:

• Hand washing
• Cover and clean wounds
• Don't use other people's personal items especially for skin
• Shower and clean
• Don't inject intravenous drugs unless medically necessary

Tuberculosis

What is Tuberculosis?

Tuberculosis (TB) is a Mycobacterium Tuberculosis bacterial infection that affects the lungs. It can be dangerous in various different ways, and some types of tuberculosis are expensive and risky to treat. Tuberculosis is the most deadly bacteria in the world, claiming over 4000 lives a day, and just in 2017 alone, 1.6 million people died from it. The Tuberculosis bacteria destroys lung tissues, causing lung damage and making them cough and spread the bacteria. TB is an opportunistic infection as well. It often targets people with HIV more because their immune systems are weakened by it.

What are opportunistic infections (OI)?

Opportunistic infections are infections that take the opportunity to attack people who have HIV. OIs can be very dangerous for people who have HIV because their immune systems are weakened and isn't able to fight another disease. Hepatitis B and C are examples of OIs.

How do you catch it?

TB bacteria is caught when you breathe it in. So if someone with TB coughs, sneezes or speaks into your face or close to you , you may contract it.

Types:

- Active TB

    - Non-drug resistant TB: Can be treated with antibiotics

    - Mono resistant TB: Only resistant to one front line drug

    - Poly resistant TB: Resistant to 2 or more front line drug but not to isoniazid or rifampicin

    - Rifampicin resistant TB: Resistant to rifampicin and/or other drugs

    - Multi resistant TB (MDR TB): Resistant to both isoniazid and rifampicin

    - Extensive resistant TB (XDR TB): Resistant to more than only the first-line drugs (including            isoniazid and rifampicin)

- Miliary TB: Affects all organs because the bacteria flowed into the bloodstreams, causing a fatal situation

- Latent TB: No symptoms, only diagnosed by tuberculin test, but can turn into active

What is Rifampicin and Isoniazid?

They're a strong pair of drugs against TB, usually used together, however more strains of TB bacterias have grown immunity to either one or both of them. (MDR/RR TB)

Symptoms:

    - cough that lasted longer than 3 weeks

    - chest pain

    - coughing up blood/sputum

    - weakness

    - fatigue

    - weight loss

    - loss of appetite

    - chills

    - fever

    - night sweating

Risks:

    - HIV patients

    - TB patients before

    - Babies

    - Young children

    - Drug addicts

    - Sick people

    - Elderly

Diagnosis needed:

    - Tuberculin skin test (TST)

    - TB Blood Test

    - Lab Test to detect for resistance patterns

Treatment:

    - Non-drug resistant TB: common antibiotics/rifampicin and isoniazid

    - Mono: use the non-resistant drug

    - Poly: use the non-resistant drug

    - MDR: Pyrazinamide/ Fluoroquinolone/ Ethionamide/ Prothionamide/Cycloserine/ PAS(para-aminosalicylic acid)

    - XDR: Depends, read this website to understand more: XDR

Preventions:

TB is most common in developing countries which are crowded, where TB can be easily transmitted. If you want to stay safe from TB, wash your hands often, cover your mouth and nose while you cough and sneeze and take your medications if you need to.

Insomnia

What is insomnia?

Insomnia is where a person is not able to sleep at night. Insomnia can happen to everyone, and is not a big issue, but long term insomnia can cause a loss of concentration during the day and weaken the immune system due to lack of sleep. Most people suffer from the minor form of acute insomnia, and it usually only occurs once or twice under stress or travelling, but some people suffer from more severe cases like chronic, comorbid, onset and maintenance insomnia. These kinds of insomnia can be caused by plenty of reasons and can be quite harmful.

5 types of insomnia:

- Acute

    - Caused by stress, time zones or sudden events

- Chronic

    - Long-term insomnia, usually if a person can't sleep more than 3 days in a week consecutively for 3 months.

- Comorbid

   - A symptom of psychological problems such as depression. Can be paired with arrthritis and back pain making it very uncomfortable

- Onset

    - Can't sleep at the beginning of the night

- Maintenance

    - oftenly waking up or just can't fall asleep

Symptoms:

- Back pain

- Tiredness

- Loss of concentration

- Not able to sleep

Treatment:

- Relaxation

- Light therapy

- Electronic restrictions

- Sleep time adjustments

- Meds

Asthma

What is Asthma?

Asthma is a medical condition narrows and swells your airways. It can produce extra mucus, causing the patient to have a shortness of breath because the airways are blocked. Asthma can vary in severity. It can be very dangerous and kill a person in an asthma attack, which it did to my grandfather; but it can also be very minor, maybe just a small cough and skipping a breath. Asthma is not a condition that can be cured, but over time, you can control it and prevent anything serious from happening. If not controlled, it can go out of hand and cause deadly asthma attacks.

What are Airways?

Airways are pipes or tubes that bring the air to the lungs. Asthmatic airways are usually the bronchioles which are connected to the bronchus and brings air to alveolar sacs, exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen.

4 Categories/Levels of Asthma:

- Mild intermittent

- Mild persistent

- Moderate persistent

- Severe persistent

Causes:

- Allergens (allergic reaction to something)

- Respiratory illnesses (cold/flu)

- Cold

- Irritants (substances in the air that irritate your airways e.g. dust/sawdust/chemicals)

- Medications

- Stress

- Preservatives

- Possibly inherited

Symptoms:

- Coughing

- Difficulty Breathing

- Shortness of Breath

- Wheezing

- Chest Tightness

- Chest Pain

Diagnosis:

- Physical scans (checking how much air is flowing through)

- X-Rays

- Allergy Tests

- Methacholine Tests

Treatment:

- Inhaler

- Oral Medication

- Allergy Medication

Prevention:

- Clean house (prevent dust or mold spores to get into your airways)

- Cover nose and mouth if cold or air quality is bad outside

- Avoid animals that shed a lot of fur

- Use A/C so outside pollen and dirt won't get in

Frostbite

What is frostbite?

Frostbite is an injury in the cold weather. It happens when your skin freezes in the cold and in severe cases, ice crystals gets into your skin cells and they start to die. Frostbite is usually classified into 3 categories, from best case scenario to worst. First, a frostnip is the most common and is a mild form of frostbite. If you live in a place or have been to a place with snow and you get some ice or snow into your glove, you'd probably experience frostnip. The damage of frostnip isn't permanent, although after you go inside and you get warm and cozy, your fingertips will probably heat up, inflame and itch a lot. Then, there's superficial frostbite. This frostbite starts to feel warm and when you get indoors and reheat it, you may get some blisters. Then, the last stage, deep frostbite comes. This is rare if you're just playing in the snow, but can happen for someone trapped in the snow. The skin will now start turning greyish, with probable muscle damage too and definite skin damage. You wouldn't feel cold or pain because your cells are literally dying. After reheating, it would form blisters and the dead skin will turn black and hard. It is possible to die from deep frostbite, but it is really rare and mostly happens when you get infected in the wound. If you die from the cold, it's dying from hypothermia, which is different.

How do you get frostbite?

At 0 to -15 degrees celsius, you get frostbite on the part of the skin exposed in about 30 minutes and under that, it can happen within 15 minutes or quicker. For example, if some snow went into your glove, and you didn't dry the glove and then proceeded to play for 30 more minutes, you would get a frostnip, which would itch and heat up or even inflame a bit.

Symptoms:

- Numbness

- Itch

- Hot and inflamed

- Muscle and joint stiffness

- Hard skin (severe)

- Blisters (severe)

Risks:

Everyone can get a frostbite, but just be careful and try to leave your skin on something cold for a long time.

What if left untreated:

Infection can be caused by bad treatment.

Diagnosis:

- By looking at the skin

- If muscle or bone damage is possible, doctors may do MRI scan or X-Ray

Treatments:

- Painkillers

- Rewarming

- Treating from infection

- Antibiotics (fight infections)

- Amputation (extreme cases)

- TPA (extreme cases)

- Removal of dead tissue