Certain Genes May Be Resistant to Typhoid Fever

This article explains what Typhoid fever is and why some people are naturally immune to it. Typhoid fever is a disease typically found in people in low income countries and it is transmitted through food or water. It is also linked to Salmonella. In Vietnam and Nepal scientists compared the genomic profile of patients with Typhoid Fever to those of healthy ones and found that the HLA locus was associated to the resistance of Typhoid fever. Now, with this information they can do further testing and research to hopefully find some kind of cure.

I found this article interesting because I had never heard of Typhoid Fever before and it is always interesting to learn about new diseases. Also, my favorite thing about science is new discoveries, especially new potential cures for any kind of disease! So, this article made me very happy because of their potential ability to find a cure!

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.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141111105158.htm