Silent Disease Carriers could be spreading deadly infections Worldwide

[Bob]

"Asymptomatic carriers of diseases can represent a major route for a pathogen to spread," said Dr Amesh Adalja of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

"Just think of Typhoid Mary," he said, referring to the asymptomatic cook who spread typhoid fever to dozens of people in the early 20th century."

Citing the recent MERS epidemic building worldwide, Dr. Swerdlow of CDC says:

"It is becoming increasingly clear that people can be infected with MERS without developing severe respiratory disease, said Dr David Swerdlow, who heads the MERS response team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"You don't have to be in the intensive care unit with pneumonia to have a case of MERS," Swerdlow told Reuters. "We assume they are less infectious (to others), but we don't know.

With the ease of jet transportation worldwide without difficulty in many locations, the ability to spread a deadly disease which can be harbored within a "carrier", (the typhoid Mary person), it is essential that people note when anything out of the ordinary happens when coming in contact with groups of people or individuals who have traveled to and from where sickness has been present.

ref: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/16/us-health-mers-research-idUSKBN0DW1LT20140516

International Business Times points out that up to 30,000 Brits may be harbouring the deadly Prion Disease that is similar to Mad-Cow Disease, a brain wasting disease that eats away one's brain, slowly and terminally making one loose memory, have organ failure and a horrible wasting away death.

"After taking appendix samples from 32,441 anonymous patients who had had their appendixes removed between 2000 and 2012, researchers discovered 16 that tested positive for Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or vCJD -- the human form of the fatal neurodegenerative disease found in cows called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. That’s about 1 in 2,000 people, or roughly 30,000 of Britain’s 60 million residents.

"These people may harbor that [vCJD] for a longer time; they may develop a different type of prion disease; they may be silent carriers," Dr. Sebastian Brandner, one of the study authors and head of the Division of Neuropathology at Queen Square, told CNN Health."

http://www.ibtimes.com/30000-brits-are-silent-carriers-human-mad-cow-disease-1429374

Giving blood is a good way to spread a hidden disease which is not tested for under standard blood tests. The carriers of virus' such as MERS could very well be other present in our environment.

[Cardillac]

as for 'Mad Cow Disease':

a former co-worker of mine died of this affliction (he was only 54)- at least that was the diagnosis and he had all the classical symptoms in the right sequence of the progression of this disease-

only problem: he was a strict vegitarian his entire adult life...

I read somewhere (can't remember source- was so long ago) that what is labled "Mad Cow Disease" is simply a severe lack of copper or the body's inability to retain enough copper, but don't know if that is correct-

"Giving blood is a good way to spread a hidden disease which is not tested for under standard blood tests"- I think we can safely assume "standard blood tests" are as manipulated as everything else in the allopathic medical world-

stay well all-

Larry

[Bob]

Worldwide, about 1 million deaths occur each year due to chronic forms of the disease called Hepatitis B (HBV).

Persistent or chronic HBV infection is among the most common persistent viral infections in humans.

More than 350 million people in the world today are estimated to be persistently infected with HBV and asymptomatic.

A large fraction of these are in eastern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where the associated complications of chronic liver disease and liver cancer are the most important health problems.

How the body deals with the virus varies.

The course of hepatitis B may be extremely variable.

Hepatitis B virus infection has different clinical manifestations depending on the patient’s age at infection and immune status, and the stage at which the disease is recognized.

During the incubation phase of the disease (6 to 24 weeks), patients may feel unwell with possible nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, anorexia and headaches.

Patients may then become jaundiced (skin and eyes yellowing) although low grade fever and loss of appetite may improve. Sometimes HBV infection produces neither jaundice nor obvious symptoms.

The long incubation could be a reason that a person may forget or not connect their exposure source.

Most adult patients recover completely from their HBV infection, but others, about 5 to 10%, will not clear the virus and will progress to become asymptomatic carriers or develop chronic hepatitis possibly resulting in cirrhosis and/or liver cancer.

HBV occurs worldwide.

The highest rates of HBsAg carrier rates are found in developing countries with primitive or limited medical facilities.23

In areas of Africa and Asia, widespread infection may occur in infancy and childhood. The overall HBsAg carrier rates may be 10 to 15%.

The prevalence is lowest in countries with the highest standards of living, such as Great Britain, Canada, United States, Scandinavia, and some other European Nations.

In North America infection is most common in young adults. In the USA and Canada, serological evidence of previous infection varies depending on age and socioeconomic class.

Overall, 5% of the adult USA population has anti-HBc, and 0.5% are HBsAg (this is the antigen marker for the virus) positive.

In developed countries, exposure to HBV may be common in certain high-risk groups. Risk groups include health care workers.

Occasionally, outbreaks have been traced to tattoo parlors and acupuncturists. Rarely, transmission to patients from HBsAg positive health care workers has been documented. Blood transfusions, dirty needles, knife fights with contaminated infected blood or fist fights where blood is transferred (open skin breaks), sexual contact transmission, from mother to baby potential.. are some of the possibilities of how one may acquire an infection.

HBsAg has been found in all body secretions and excretions. However, only blood, vaginal and menstrual fluids, and semen have been shown to be infectious agents for transmission.

Contaminated Surface Transmission:
HBV is stable on environmental surfaces for at least 7 days, and indirect inoculation of HBV can occur via inanimate objects like toothbrushes, baby bottles, toys, razors, eating utensils, hospital equipment and other objects, by contact with mucous membranes or open skin breaks.

Infectious HBV can be present in blood without detectable HBsAg, so that the failure to detect antigen does not exclude the presence of infectious virus.

This leads to the potential for spreading the infection, and due to the long incubation time, it can be missed.

The source of infection cannot be identified in about 35% of cases.

The natural reservoir for HBV is man. Closely related hepa-dna-viruses have been found in woodchucks and ducks, but they are not infectious for humans.

more information: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/hepatitis/whocdscsrlyo20022/en/index3.html


reference:
23. Mahoney FJ, Kane M. Hepatitis B vaccine. In: Plotkin SA and Orenstein WA, eds. Vaccines, 3rd ed. Philadelphia, W.B. Saunders Company, 1999:158-182

[Bob]

How Typhoid Mary stayed Healthy

from: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-typhoid-mary-stayed-healthy-100824/?no-ist


http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/files/2013/08/typhoid.jpg

Some people carrying chronic diseases can breeze through life, showing no symptoms of the microbes within—only to infect the people they come into contact with, occasionally with deadly results.

The most infamous case of an asymptomatic disease-carrier was Typhoid Mary.

In the early 1900s, Mary Mallon worked as a cook in prominent New York households.

After arriving in a kitchen, however, a plague of typhoid would often sweep the household.

Eventually, Mallon was forced into exile on North Brother Island on the East River, but only after she had infected around 50 people, killing three of them.

Researchers have come one step closer to understanding what makes some people able to carry otherwise deadly microbes without so much as a sniffle.

Bacteria such as the Salmonella that Mary Mallon carried, researchers found, may “hack” some of the hosts’ cells.

In certain situations, the infective bacteria can find a set of cells, a mellower macrophage associated with the later stages of infection. Once inside those cells, the bacteria essentially hack the genetic programming that sets off production of glucose for the host cell, and its own survival.

The researchers suspected that this protein may be involved in bestowing some patients with asymptomatic infection, since mice infected with typhoid tend to have higher levels of those molecules. Salmonella, the researchers think, quietly invades the macrophages, then forces those cells to jump into a hospitable anti-inflammatory state and, additionally, lend the bacteria a metabolic boost.

Without the inflammatory stage, the body ignores the invader. The cytokine reaction in other words is part of the recognizance phase the body uses to identify and flush out invaders.

In an asymptomatic carrier, this inflammatory stage is suppressed. (I have pointed out many times the using of anti-histamines for instance, that which stops the inflammatory phase can be dangerous as it can lead to this embedding of the invaders, later progressing to asymptomatic carrier status).

Researchers think, a potential therapy could be developed to block the bacteria’s ability to produce asymptomatic typhoid, which afflicts around 16 million people worldwide each year, the researchers report. Between 1 and 6 percent of those people will develop asymptomatic typhoid.

[Cardillac]

@Bob

"1 million deaths occur each year due to chronic forms of the disease called Hepatitis B (HBV)"- not to mention how so-called 'AIDS' initially broke out in the USA Gay community shortly after the first Hepatitis-B vaccine trials began; William Cooper states the time-frames in which this occured in his book "Behold a Pale Horse," assuming Cooper is credible-

"A large fraction of these are in eastern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where the associated complications of chronic liver disease and liver cancer are the most important health problems"- well, no wonder; 'AIDS' was also completely un-known in Africa (start with the sub-Saharan group) until ca. 1 million Africans were given a Smallpox...vaccination (if my gleaned sources are correct); but even if it wasn't a 'Smallpox' vaccination (by the way, why is this horrendous disease called 'small'?) it seems most epidemics start with...vaccinations (didn't the so-called 'Spanish Flu' begin with vaccinations, if my gleaned sources are correct?)-

the fact that "AIDS" came from chimp-bites in the jungle (for how many centuries were Africans bitten by chimps and they didn't get AIDS until miraculosly vaccinations appeared?)- and how many Gay Americans were bitten by jungle chimps?- rhetorical question...

it's just my own personal cheap opinion but I think all of these 'rare' but very virulent diseases come from vaccines;

now look at the 'pet' world; my one co-worker (who has finally come to her senses) has realized, of her three cats, the cat who lived the longest was the one not vaccinated...

be well Bob and all other readers-

Larry

[Lifebringer]

Mers has an incubation period of 42 days. That's a lot of time to get from one place to the other and spread it around in tourism. In the series "The Event" they broke the Spanish Flu strain down, so it was carried for 3 days and put in a airport duct system.

[Bob]

Hi, I found MERS to have an incubation period of 11 days. Wonder which variant has 42? Could you help me with that? tnx.

discussed here: http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?70812-Reported-cases-of-MERS-have-surged-in-Saudi-Arabia-in-2014-and-no-one-seems-to-know-why&p=826695&viewfull=1#post826695


Mers has an incubation period of 42 days. That's a lot of time to get from one place to the other and spread it around in tourism. In the series "The Event" they broke the Spanish Flu strain down, so it was carried for 3 days and put in a airport duct system.

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

Bob, since you're educated on this topic,
what is you perception of racial differences in terms of tolerated diseases and becoming a carrier,
especially in light of vaccines administered before troops (generally white people and those exposed to them) go to at-risk areas?

You mentioned bacteria being able to hijack a body's cells -- that's very fascinating; I knew that Micoplasmas could do this, and possibly Y Pestis (?),
but wasn't aware that they were able to directly "hack" into the machinery like viruses do.

There is the whole realm of recombinant products, i.e. yeasts bacteria and viruses put together, and those are the ones I really don't enjoy -- but that aside,
what of the idea that vaccinated people can be silent carriers of various diseases?

Or just people who live in our population then interface with a group that has not encountered our diseases?

sorry for so many questions.

edit: educated not education LOL so tired

[Ellisa]

The whole point seems to be that many diseases are symptomless for varying periods. I have just heard of a friend in the UK who has been diagnosed with TB. He was always well, energetic and seemingly healthy until a year or so ago. He's ageing now(!) so his symptoms were assumed to be part of being 70+. He got no better and testing revealed TB! He cannot remember anyone around him with TB but it was thought he had probably picked it up on a recent holiday trip to SE Asia. But then, because he was not doing well with treatment he was taking, further tests were done. These showed (I have no idea how) that he had had the disease for years, and the origin was in the stomach! He is receiving further treatment and it is expected that he will do well with the correct antibiotic.

However this is a man who, in every way seemed well and acted normally over the long period when he was developing TB. There were no symptoms, nothing until recently. It is very scary to think about really!

[Bob]

Bob, since you're educated on this topic,
what is you perception of racial differences in terms of tolerated diseases and becoming a carrier,
especially in light of vaccines administered before troops (generally white people and those exposed to them) go to at-risk areas?

You mentioned bacteria being able to hijack a body's cells -- that's very fascinating; I knew that Micoplasmas could do this, and possibly Y Pestis (?),
but wasn't aware that they were able to directly "hack" into the machinery like viruses do.

There is the whole realm of recombinant products, i.e. yeasts bacteria and viruses put together, and those are the ones I really don't enjoy -- but that aside,
what of the idea that vaccinated people can be silent carriers of various diseases?

Or just people who live in our population then interface with a group that has not encountered our diseases?

sorry for so many questions.

edit: educated not education LOL so tired

Hi Tesla, there is a doc put out by the "Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Bureau of Infectious Disease (http://www.mass.gov/eohhs/docs/dph/cdc/reporting/rdiq-reg-summary.pdf)" that discusses some of that.

Their definition of Carrier is this:
"Carrier. An individual who can tolerate an infection so as not to become ill, yet is able to transmit the disease-causing organism to cause infection and illness in others. "

There explanation of Resistance is this:

Resistance.
The sum total of body mechanisms which interpose barriers to the progress of invasion or multiplication of infectious agents or to damage by their toxic products.

A. Immunity is that resistance usually associated with possessing antibodies or cells having a specific activity against the etiologic agent of an infectious disease. Passive immunity is attained either naturally by maternal transfer or artificially by introducing specific protective antibodies. Passive immunity is of brief duration. Active immunity is attained by infection, with or without symptoms, or by introducing certain fractions or products of the infectious agent or the agent itself in a killed, modified or variant form.
B. Natural resistance is the ability to resist disease independently of antibodies or a specific cellular response. It commonly rests in anatomic, cellular or physiologic characteristics of the host. It may be genetic or acquired, permanent or temporary.


Different genetic makeup historically accounts for a potential difference in how over time the DNA has progressed to deal with the etiologic agent the disease. Acquiring a natural resistance to deal with a virus, could result in rapid eradication of the virus in the body, verses or only partially dealing with it. Yellow Fever "vaccination" for instance requires a "booster" of more "infective agent" every 10 years so that the body continues to keep actively attacking the target (thusly forming a low-grade chronic infection).

Susceptible. A person or animal not possessing resistance to a pathogenic agent. Such a person or animal is liable to contract a disease if or when significantly exposed to such agent.

Are some people less susceptible in certain cases? Apparently yes.

ref: http://www.who.int/genomics/public/geneticdiseases/en/index3.html - world health organization page..

Here is some data from that page:

Most diseases involve many genes in complex interactions, in addition to environmental influences. An individual may not be born with a disease but may be at high risk of acquiring it.

This is called as genetic predisposition or susceptibility.

The genetic susceptibility to a particular disease due to the presence of one or more gene mutations, and/or a combination of alleles need not necessarily be abnormal.

WHO's department of Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health (NMH) has done extensive work on major noncommunicable diseases, like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and some mental illnesses. In some cases, such as cancer, individuals are born with genes that are altered by lifestyle habits or exposure to chemicals.

Cancer, for example, may involve tumour-suppressor genes, genes which suppress tumour formation, which lose their function, thus giving rise to carcinomas.

Cardiovascular disease tends to manifest itself in specific ways unique to various communities. For example, African communities tend to have strokes as a result of cardiovascular disease, while south Asians tend to have heart attacks.


Y. Pestis, or commonly known as Plague

In my thread on Hemorrhagic fevers, there is a lot of mention the various carriers of diseases - those vectors (transmission methods) can be animal or insect.. Something keeps the vector from dying necessarily from the disease, but I believe there is not sufficient study what the life span or injury rate to the "vector" is from the disease. Possibly studying such would lend itself to better methods of acquiring an induced immunity in the animal populations.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1695521/ talks about how certain species of mice can be naturally resistant to plague.

Plague in humans is caused by the gram-negative bacterium Yersinia pestis (6). The disease is 50 to 100% fatal if untreated and potentially could be caused on an epidemic scale by a malicious act. And that is one reason that the military are vaccinated against various strains and types.

Here is what NCBI says about pneumonic plague: Vaccination with live attenuated Yersinia pestis confers protection against pneumonic plague but is not considered safe for general use. - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1828512/

Background:
Plague is caused by Yersinia pestis, a gram-negative facultative intracellular bacterium. Humans naturally acquire Y. pestis infections from fleas, which acquire the bacteria from rodent reservoirs. Pandemics of flea-borne plague have killed hundreds of millions of people during recorded history. While improved sanitation, coupled with the development of antibiotics, has dramatically reduced the incidence of plague today, the documented existence of virulent antibiotic-resistant Y. pestis strains raises concern that plague may be exploited as a biological weapon.

Pneumonic plague is the most feared and deadly disease caused by Y. pestis. This rapidly progressing disease results from inhalation of aerosolized Y. pestis and can be spread from person to person. Pneumonic plague is nearly always fatal unless antibiotic treatment is initiated soon after infection . While natural outbreaks of pneumonic plague are uncommon, they have been reported, and Cold War scientists developed means to purposefully aerosolize Y. pestis. Effectively aerosolized, antibiotic-resistant Y. pestis would constitute a formidable biological weapon.

Vaccination against plague would thwart the use of antibiotic-resistant Y. pestis as a biological weapon, but safe and effective pneumonic plague vaccines are not currently available. A live attenuated “EV76” vaccine effectively protects nonhuman primates against pneumonic plague, and induces high-titer antibody in humans, but it also causes chronic infections in nonhuman primates and severe adverse reactions in humans.

Despite the risks, the military wants ways to protect its troops even with the risks and chronic infection problems due to the inoculations.

As to the question, could an attenuated virus in a vaccine become a source of a viral mutation? Possibly considering the nanotechnology happening in the field to date. I don't personally believe medical science has enough of the scope of the magnitude of the nanoworld, the virus world at this point. Basic research happens to understand how to prevent "wildfire" episodes from diseases of unknown origin.

However as was pointed out in the Hemorrhagic fever thread, the bio-weaponization by rogue countries (signing treaties and never-the-less continuing to work on bioweapons) remains a reality.

Knowledge as you point out, goes hand and hand with education. How to understand without creating or a situation worse is a challenge.

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

Thanks for this very detailed answer -- I will write more when I get back -- ;)

The point re: having many sick troops vs the alternative of having formerly healthy dead troops is interesting... yikes, right?
But on the other side of the coin, the army decimated by care of the wounded is no army at all, either...

:X

[Bob]

Up to 5000 people exposed ~ Do you live in Springfield Missouri ?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/22/up-to-5000-exposed-to-hepatitis-in-springfield/

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) - Immunizations are being offered for up to 5,000 people who might have been exposed to the hepatitis A virus at a Springfield restaurant.

The Springfield-Greene County Health Department announced Wednesday that the Red Robin restaurant, at 3720 S. Glenstone Ave., reported on Tuesday that a worker had the liver disease.

Anyone who visited the restaurant between May 8 and May 16 can receive the immunization Thursday and Friday at a Remington’s restaurant at 1655 W. Republic Road, and at the Smith Glynn Callway Clinic from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday through Monday.

Officials said customers must be vaccinated within 14 days of their possible exposure, or the vaccination won’t work, The Springfield News-Leader reported (http://sgfnow.co/1oT4Woh ).
Kathryn Wall, a spokeswoman for the health department, said people may have been exposed to the disease before May 8, although she could not estimate how many.

“There is a possibility of exposure as early as (May 4),” Wall said. “Those individuals should monitor their health and report symptoms to their health care providers.”
Health officials said the Red Robin is now safe to visit.

Allyson Tuckness and her husband, Chris, ate at Red Robin on May 16, with their toddler, Mason. She said their son has already had vaccinations against hepatitis A.
“I’m annoyed that it happened but glad we found out during the incubation period,” Tuckness said.

Kelly Lister of Springfield said she is scared after eating at the restaurant May 16 with several relatives.

“It’s a pretty contagious thing,” Lister said.