Transcript document
Hey guys! What’s up? My name is Francisella tularensi. I am a gram-negative, facultative intracellular bacterium. When I enter your body, I cause a disease called Tularemia. A lot of times I’ve heard you calling it rabbit fever or deerfly fever. It’s called Tularemia. There is a magnified picture of me! So how do I get inside of you? See those guys over there? Mr. Flea, Mr. Mosquito, and Ms. Tick. They’re great guys. They help me get inside you. Just one bite of an infected tick, flea or mosquito or direct contact with an infected animal or its dead body allows me to enter inside of you. Unfortunately, I’m not contagious, but I can sometimes enter you through contaminated food and water, although I rarely do so. So, now I’m in you. What next? Well, you guys don’t even know I’m there until you start getting…what do call those…symptoms? I call them damage. You get chills, a fever, a headache, joint stiffness, muscle pains, shortness of breath, and you get red spots on the skin, which enlarge to sores and ulcers. Wanna see some pics? Tularemia causes you to get red spots on the skin, which get larger and into ulcers. Here’s what it looks like… Scared? Relax, you eventually get rid of me… Often times, you humans are smart enough to go to the doctor and the fact that I’m in your body is detected. Some methods of being diagnosed are: Blood culture for tularemia Serology for tularemia (blood test measuring the body's immune response to the infection) Chest x-ray Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test of a sample from an ulcer Tularemia is rare, and therefore not many individuals are unlucky enough to have me visit them. When I do, though, antibiotics are used to treat the infection. Some of the antibiotics that are used include streptomycin, tetracycline, and chloramphenicol. If you’re still scared, you can go get a vaccine, although usually it is people like trappers, hunters and laboratory workers that get these vaccines. Bye! Hope to never see me again! Google Health. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Jan. 2010. <https://health.google.com/health/ref/Tularemia>. Google Images. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Jan. 2010. <http://images.google.com>. USNews. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Jan. 2010. <http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/060329/29hhs_tula remia.htm>. UTMB Healthcare Epidemiology. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Jan. 2010. <http://www.utmb.edu/hce/BioterrorismPlan/Tularemia/index.htm>. Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Jan. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisella_tularensis>.