Within our environment, bacteria became a part of our life from the very existence of mankind. We cannot deny or totally remove these bacteria from our environment and even from our body. Though there are a lot of bacteria which are very beneficial for us and even necessary things for some reason, infectious bacteria are dangerous for us.
Bacteria
Bacteria are one cellular, microscopic living things. They are different shaped things like balls or rods or circulars or spirals etc. As they are microscopic, they are very tiny and so, 1000 of them may fit across an eraser. These bacteria are one of those life forms which are unbelievably spread out all over the world. They are present from ice slopes to deserts because there is a huge number of species of bacteria.
Types of Infectious Bacteria
Bacteria are different in forms. Infectious bacteria are classified depending on their size and shape. There are, basically, four types of bacteria that cause the infection like the bacilli, the cocci, the spirochetes and the Vibrio.
The bacillus bacteria are rod-shaped and they are around 0.03mm long. They are the cause of typhoid and cystitis disease.
The cocci bacteria shape like a sphere and they are around 0.001mm in diameter. They live in a wide range of form like in pairs or in long lines or as a tight cluster. They are the cause of boils like infection and sexually transmitted gonorrhea disease.
The spirochetes are spiral in shape. They cause a wide number of diseases like sexually transmissible syphilis disease.
The Vibrio is comma-shaped. They are the cause of cholera, severe diarrhea, dehydration etc.
So many types of disease by one type of bacteria make it difficult to determine the disease and though a lot of researches have already done, more researches are continuing by medical scientists.
Infectious Bacteria
The majority of bacteria is beneficial for us as they serve as our beneficial body part. Because they act as an agent of digesting food or supplying necessary vitamins. Many of them are used to make or prepare food. Only less than 1% of bacteria are infectious for our body. This lower than 1% bacteria can be so much harmful that they can be the cause of death sometimes. They can enter the body very swiftly. Some of them can destroy our body cells and may make harmful toxins. These harmful bacteria are called pathogenic bacteria. These infectious bacteria can cause meningitis, Pneumonia, and food poisoning usually. They cause more dangerous disease too. Antibiotics are the typical treatment for bacterial infection. But we should be careful to resist the entrance of them to our body as they can be more dangerous than we think about them. The good news is that there is some vaccination discovered which has been made to resist some harmful bacterial function in our body like tetanus or whooping cough.
Beneficial Bacteria
Most of the bacteria are necessary for us and so, we cannot deny their necessity rather we sometimes, depend on them. Many bacteria act as the digestive things of our body just like the enzymes. They work as encouraging digestion material or directly help to digest some food. These types of bacteria stay in the gastrointestinal tract of a human body and help in digestion and even as immunity agent. We hear from the doctors or nutritionists to suggest us to have yogurt after taking any antibiotics because we need to repopulate our gastrointestinal tract with these beneficial bacteria. These beneficial bacteria are known as probiotics. These can be the medicine for infectious diarrhea. They are also used as the medicine for reducing the gas problem, bloating and also an abdominal pain. Many types of researches are going on to know the medicine for different disease made by these probiotics and to know their dosage.
Bacterial Entrance to Our Body
Bacteria can easily enter our body and the most dangerous case is that they can reproduce in our body on their own. With their quick reproduction after entering a human body. The infection increase rapidly. Bacteria can enter by direct or even indirect contact with our body.
Bacteria can be passed to our body by direct contact with any bacteria bearing persons or animals or from mother-fetus contact. Bacteria are passed from a person to another person through coughing, kissing or by sexual contact. From animal, these can be passed by biting, scratching or even by the handling of any animal waste. From mother to fetus, it can be passed through the transmission in between placenta or from the vaginal canal at the time of birth delivery.
Bacteria can be passed to our body by indirectly when we touch some inanimate things like a door knob, taps, toys etc., if there are alive bacteria present. Bacteria can be also passed by insect biting or from contaminated food or water. Even when we breathe in the exhaled droplets of infected peoples' cough or sneeze.
Bacterial Characteristics
Actually, the bacterial spreading is very broad and quick because of the high reproduction power of them and also because they can cope up with the different environment very easily. They make a coating layer on the outside of their body to settle at the worse environment and be normal when the environment becomes favorable for them. Destroying this coating is more difficult than a single cell. They move around the whole world so fast and easily that they one bacterium can go a very long distance around the world within their life cycle. Their reproductive system is also simple and fast. They simply divide into two and this continues rapidly and repeatedly during their reproduction. This system is so fast that they can be divided into 500,000 or more cells within only 8 hours.
Symptoms of Bacterial Infection
The symptom of the bacterial infection depends on the affected body parts. These symptoms are so similar that diagnosis becomes difficult for the doctor. Common symptoms are coughing, runny nose, headache etc. Doctors prefer to use other symptoms to diagnose. They check the fever or body aching condition of the body or the duration of illness. They may take some lab tests to determine the type of the bacteria.
Different Bacterial Diseases
There are loads of bacterial infectious diseases like bacterial skin disease, sexual disease or gastrointestinal diseases. Some of them are described here:
Bacterial Skin Infection
This type of infections is mainly caused by the staphylococcus or streptococcus. There is a variety of skin infection that is caused by bacteria. The cellulitis skin infection is found on the legs generally or may be on any part of the body and this causes painful infection and red coloring spots. The folliculitis infection is the huge infection caused by improper treatments on the skin. It causes a pimple like red and swollen spots and it is painful. The impetigo types of skin infection are caused to the skin of preschool-aged children. This occurs as yellow oozing sores. This infection occurs as red and firm bumps.
Bacterial Food poisoning
Food poisoning is a common disease caused by bacteria. There are many types of bacterial food infectious diseases. The common symptoms of this are the Nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, fever, abdominal pain and chills etc. The food poisoning can be passed from Raw meat, eggs, fish, poultry, and unpasteurized dairy. Unhygienic foods and improper food handling, may cause the food poisoning. There are different types of bacterial food infection. The c. jejuni bacteria cause diarrhea with fever and cramps. The c. botulinum can cause even death through severe food poisoning by neurotoxins. The e. coli cause diarrhea with nausea, fever, abdominal pain and vomiting. The l. monocytogenes bacteria cause fever, diarrhea and muscle pains. For this bacteria, weak persons are mostly at risks for the infants, elderly persons and especially pregnant women. The salmonella bacteria cause fever, diarrhea and abdominal pain but, it can be cured within 4 to 7 days. The Vibrio bacteria cause fever and diarrhea and sometimes it may cause severe infection if it passed from open wounds.
Sexual Bacterial Infection
Some bacteria may cause sexual infectious diseases. These diseases can be the reason of severe reproductive damage. There many types of sexually transmitted diseases. Chlamydia sexual infection is caused by the chlamydia trachomatous bacteria which can be the reason for pelvic inflammatory disease of women. The Neisseria gonorrheae bacteria are the cause of gonorrhea, which also can be the reason of pelvic inflammatory disease of women. This can affect men too. The syphilis disease is caused by the Treponema pallidum bacteria which is a dangerous disease. The bacterial vaginosis causes the excessive growth of infectious bacteria in the woman's vagina and can be the cause of severe irritation and reproductive problem.
Bacterial Meningitis
This is a dangerous disease of the brain. It infects the meninges and also the lining of the brain. It can be the cause of paralysis or severe pain.
Otitis Media
This is an ear infection. This causes the inflammation of the middle part of the ear. It causes severe pain in the ear. This disease generally occurs in infants or preschool-aged children.
Urinary Tract Infection
This disease causes the infection of the bladder, urethra and ureters. This typically affects kidneys too. It can be the cause of kidney failure if it cannot be treated in time.
Respiratory Tract Infection
This infection is caused by the tuberculosis types of bacteria. It causes sore throat, sinusitis, bronchitis, and pneumonia.
Bacterial Infection Cure
The bacterial infection is generally cured by the human body immune system automatically. The body reacts to the infection as a usual response of the human body. When our body feels the presence of the infectious bacteria, the local blood flow increases automatically which causes the inflammation. The immune system of the human body sends protective cells to destroy infectious bacteria. Some antibodies also originate from the immune system to encourage the bacteria destruction procedure. Like this system, some of the serious disease like diphtheria and tetanus may be cured if the immune system of the body is strong enough.
Severe infections are treated with the antibiotics, of course. The bacterial antibiotics work in a certain process. However, immunization is now available for some diseases like influenza type B, whooping cough and tetanus.
Antibiotic Cure
Antibiotic are medicines to treat the serious bacterial infection. The main process of an antibiotic is disrupting bacterial growth. At the first phase, emerging antibiotic-resistant strains are started but then the bacterial metabolic processes are destroyed by the antibiotics. Antibiotics should be taken properly by the patients because it may worsen the situation if the antibiotics are not taken in proper time and proper dosage. There are records of spreading a lot of strains of bacteria due to improper use of antibiotics.
The dangerous effect of improper antibiotic use is the production of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These bacteria no longer possess any effect of antibiotics. A lot of people are infected with these types of bacteria now which leads to even death. A dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacterium is the Staphylococcus aureus which resists the methicillin types of antibiotics that are used for Staphylococcus bacterial infection. These infections spreading begin from the skin contact. This infection generally occurs in hospitals and clinics and it can be the cause of pneumonia and bloodstream infection. These types of infection can be burst in epidemic form maybe in tattoo parlors or, in daycare facilities or, in schools and even among athletes.
Conclusion
Bacterial infection is nothing for those who has the strong immune system but certain bacteria can be fatal. So, taking the immediate medical suggestion and proper care for bacterial infection is very much important. If the case needs antibiotic use, then it will be the time of real caution about taking them.
