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This past disease is making a comeback and it is stronger than ever - Walla! health

2021-03-14T22:52:32.390Z


Not only is the corona mutating - Cambridge scientists are raising a red flag after identifying a number of dangerous variants of a disease from the past, which are likely to make it resistant to vaccines and drugs


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This past disease is making a comeback and is stronger than ever

Not only is the corona mutating - Cambridge scientists are raising a red flag after identifying a number of dangerous variants of a disease from the past, which are likely to make it resistant to vaccines and drugs

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  • Vaccines

  • germs

  • Bacteria are resistant

  • antibiotics

Walla!

health

Monday, 15 March 2021, 00:45

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Secretes a dangerous toxin in the body.

The bacterium that causes diphtheria, illustration (Photo: ShutterStock)

Scientists are following with concern the morbidity trends in one of the diseases that most of us thought we had long ago left behind - diphtheria.

Recently there have been reports of changes in the genome of the bacterium that causes the disease, which make it more resistant to several types of antibiotics and may also lead to its resistance to the vaccine.



Diphtheria is a highly contagious disease caused by a bacterium called Corynebacterium diphtheriae that secretes toxins in the body.

The infection most often occurs in the mucous membranes of the mucus in the nose, pharynx and throat, and causes symptoms of high fever and sore throat.

But infection with this bacterium and especially the toxins it secretes has a relatively high risk of complications such as myocarditis, neuritis, kidney problems and blood clotting disorders.

And without proper treatment, diphtheria can also be fatal.

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Modern medicine - and especially vaccine surgeries - have led to the disease being almost exacerbated in recent decades.

In 2016, for example, 7,097 cases of diphtheria were reported worldwide, a dramatic decrease compared to 100,000 cases in 1980. However, scientists today express serious concern that this achievement is slipping through our fingers.

No case of diphtheria has been documented in Israel since 2000 and the vaccine against the disease is included in routine vaccines (as part of the pentagonal vaccine) given to children in the first year of life with a drop of milk and other vaccines later in life (along with tetanus vaccination in IDF, .

The symptoms of diphtheria are fever and sore throat, but complications are the problem.

Sore throat (Photo: ShutterStock)

Samples taken from patients in recent times indicate genetic changes in the structure of the bacterium that causes diphtheria, and the result of these changes is resistance to various antibiotics.

The scientists also believe that these changes may later help the bacterium evade the effective mechanism of the diphtheria vaccine.

Red flag at Cambridge

Those who have raised a red flag in this matter are scientists from the University of Cambridge in the UK, whose article was published in the journal Nature Communications.

As part of their study, they analyzed more than 500 samples of the bacterium thin with assumed than 16 countries and areas in different parts of the world and collected over 122 years, including a subset of samples from India, which recorded half the cases thin with documented in 2018.



Their research identified Also some disturbing genetic changes: Most of the damage of the disease is caused by the toxin secreted by the bacterium.

This toxin is encoded in the genome of the virus on a gene called the tox gene and is also the target that the vaccine attacks.

In samples analyzed by researchers from Cambridge, they were able to identify 18 different variants of the toxin gene, many of which may also alter the structure of the toxin itself.

If these changes continue and continue to occur, the structure of the toxin may change so significantly that the vaccine against it will no longer be effective.

Vaccination and anti-diphtheria drugs focus on the toxin gene, and in recent years it has frequently undergone mutations.

Antibiotics (Photo: ShutterStock)

"Although our data do not yet indicate that the vaccine currently in use will be ineffective against the changes, the fact that we are seeing a steady increase in variants of the toxin gene signals that the drug treatments and vaccine targeting this gene should be re-evaluated on a regular basis," Gordon Dugan, of the Institute for Immunological Therapy and Infectious Diseases at Cambridge University and the author of this study.

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Diphtheria patients can now be treated with several types of antibiotics, but unfortunately the changes that researchers have identified in the genome of the bacterium that causes the disease indicate that these treatments will no longer be possible in the near future.

In the study, they identified that genes that express antibiotic resistance have become increasingly common in the bacterium's genome.

Genome sections of the bacterium found in samples taken from patients in the last decade (2010-2019) showed the highest number of antibiotic-resistant genes per genome - an average four times higher than the number of these genes detected in samples from the 1990s.



"The bacterium is starting to develop resistance even to antibiotics that are not currently used to treat diphtheria. Apparently there are other factors that have influenced these changes, such as cases of asymptomatic patients or exposure to a wide variety of antibiotics used to treat other diseases," explained Dr. Robert Will. Who participated in the study.

It is estimated that 117 people around the world have missed routine immunizations due to the corona epidemic.

Vaccine (Photo: ShutterStock)

The corona is also to blame

And the corona plague (how not) also has a part in exacerbating the diphtheria problem, indirectly at least.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 117 million people worldwide will miss vaccines for preventable diseases, such as diphtheria, measles and more, due to the global corona crisis.

Given that the morbidity trend in diphtheria is also on the rise in recent years, the corona epidemic may be another obstacle in dealing with stopping the spread of diphtheria.



"We must not take our eyes off the target, in the case of diphtheria, otherwise we run the risk of it becoming a global threat again, and this time we may see an upgraded and sophisticated version of it," said another researcher, Dr. Ankor Mutraja of Cambridge University.

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Source: walla

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