Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Typhoid Gene Revealed

Typhoid fever is a serious problem in many places in the world. When people eat or drink contaminated food or water, they contract typhoid fever. Typhoid fever takes many lives over the course of a year. About 26.9 million people are infected each year and an estimated 200,000 lives are taken. Now for the first time, scientists have discovered that some people carrying a particular gene might be more prone to catching typhoid fever. As lead researcher, Dr. Sarah Dunstan at the Nossal Institute of Global Health at the University of Melbourne explains that certain forms of the HLA-DRB1 gene found in humans is a natural resistance to typhoid fever.



Knowing this basic resistance to typhoid fever will hopefully lead to better understanding of disease resistance. With the knowledge of disease resistance, scientists will be able to better guard against typhoid fever and hopefully other bacterial diseases in the future. Typhoid fever is a very tricky bacteria that is becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics. Current vaccinations are barely effective especially against the strain of typhoid fever called paratyphoid fever. Because of this resistance, better prevention and treatment of typhoid fever is greatly needed in order to help the growing number of infected people around the world.

1 comment:

  1. This is a very interesting finding that you have detailed in your blog post. It is astounding to see that each year 26.9 million people are infected with Typhoid fever, and that 200,000 individuals are dying due to the condition. Finding a gene that produces increased resistance to Typhoid fever certainly is significant in further research that may unveil information to assist those who have or may fall victim to the condition. Antibiotic resistance makes the issue even worse, so hopefully medical researchers will be successful in using this new knowledge to profile the condition in more detail, and produce greater protection against it. Good post!

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