Cholera: Difference between revisions

Jump to navigation Jump to search
Priyamvada Singh (talk | contribs)
Priyamvada Singh (talk | contribs)
Line 37: Line 37:


==[[Cholera historical perspective|Historical perspective]]==
==[[Cholera historical perspective|Historical perspective]]==
===Origin and spread===
Cholera was originally [[endemic (epidemiology)|endemic]] to the Indian subcontinent, with the Ganges River likely serving as a contamination reservoir. It spread by trade routes (land and sea) to Russia, then to Western Europe, and from Europe to North America. It is now no longer considered an issue in Europe and North America, due to filtering and [[chlorination]] of the water supply.
* 1816-1826 - '''First Cholera pandemic''': Previously restricted, the pandemic began in Bengal, then spread across India by 1820. It extended as far as China and the Caspian Sea before receding.
* 1829-1851 - '''Second Cholera pandemic''' reached Europe, London and Paris in 1832. In London, it claimed 6,536 victims (see: http://www.mernick.co.uk/thhol/1832chol.html); in Paris, 20,000 succumbed (out of a population of 650,000) with about 100,000 deaths in all of France [http://www.amicale-genealogie.org/Histoires_temps-passe/Epidemies/chol01.htm]. It reached Russia (Cholera Riots), Quebec, Canada, Ontario, Canada] and New York in the same year and the Pacific coast of North America by 1834.
* 1849 - Second major outbreak in Paris. In London, it was the worst outbreak in the city's history, claiming 14,137 lives, ten times as many as the 1832 outbreak. In 1849 cholera claimed 5,308 lives in the port city of Liverpool, England, and 1,834 in Hull, England.<ref>IBMS Institute of Biological Science [http://www.ibms.org/index.cfm?method=science.history_zone&subpage=history_choleraAn ]</ref> An outbreak in North America took the life of former U.S. President James K. Polk. Cholera spread throughout the Mississippi river system killing over 4,500 in St. Louis [http://www.stlgs.org/DBpublicationsNewsCholera.htm] and over 3,000 in New Orleans [http://www.rootsweb.com/~txpanola/epidemics.html] as well as thousands in New York.<ref>The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 by Charles E. Rosenberg</ref> In 1849 cholera was spread along the California and Oregon trail as hundreds died on their way to the California Gold Rush, Utah and Oregon.<ref>Trails of Hope: California, Oregon and Mormon Trails [http://overlandtrails.lib.byu.edu/ctrail.htm]</ref>
* 1852-1860 - '''Third Cholera pandemic''' mainly affected Russia, with over a million deaths. In 1853-4, London's epidemic claimed 10,738 lives.
* 1854 - Outbreak of cholera in Chicago took the lives of 5.5 per cent of the population (about 3,500 people).[http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/timeline/riverflow.html]. Soho outbreak in London stopped by removing the handle of the Broad Street pump by a committee instigated to action by John Snow .<ref> On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (1855) by John Snow, M.D. (1813-1858) [http://eee.uci.edu/clients/bjbecker/PlaguesandPeople/week8a.html </ref>
* 1863-1875 - '''Fourth Cholera pandemic''' spread mostly in Europe and Africa.
* 1866 - Outbreak in North America. <!-- taken from above paragraph. Not sure if this is separate from the 4th pandemic --> In London, a localized epidemic in the East End claimed 5,596 lives just as London was completing its major sewage and water treatment systems--the East End was not quite complete. William Farr, using the work of John Snow et al. as to contaminated drinking water being the likely source of the disease, was able to relatively quickly identify the East London Water Company as the source of the contaminated water. Quick action prevented further deaths.<ref> "The Ghost Map" by Steven Johnson, pg. 209 </ref> Also a minor outbreak at Ystalyfera in South Wales. Caused by the local water works using contaminated canal water, it was mainly it's workers and their families who suffered. Only 119 died.
* 1881-1896 - '''Fifth Cholera pandemic '''; The 1892 outbreak in Hamburg, Germany was the only major European outbreak; about 8,600 people died in Hamburg, causing a major political upheaval in Germany, as control over the City was removed from a City Council which had not updated Hamburg's water supplies. This was the last serious European cholera outbreak.
* 1899-1923 - '''Sixth Cholera pandemic''' had little effect in Europe because of advances in public health, but Russia was badly affected again.
* 1961-1970s - '''Seventh Cholera pandemic''' began in Indonesia, called [[El Tor]] after the strain, and reached Bangladesh in 1963, India in 1964, and the USSR in 1966. From North Africa it spread into Italy by 1973. In the late 1970s there were small outbreaks in Japan and in the South Pacific. There were also many reports of a cholera outbreak near Baku in 1972, but information about it was suppressed in the USSR.
* January 1991 to September 1994 - Outbreak in South America, apparently initiated when a ship discharged ballast water. Beginning in Peru there were 1.04 million identified cases and almost 10,000 deaths. The causative agent was an O1, El Tor strain, with small differences from the seventh pandemic strain. In 1992 a new strain appeared in Asia, a non-O1, nonagglutinable vibrio (NAG) named O139 Bengal. It was first identified in Tamil Nadu, India and for a while displaced El Tor in southern Asia before decreasing in prevalence from 1995 to around 10% of all cases. It is considered to be an intermediate between El Tor and the classic strain and occurs in a new serogroup. There is evidence of the emergence of wide-spectrum resistance to drugs such as [[trimethoprim]], [[sulfamethoxazole]] and [[streptomycin]].
* 2007 - The U.N. reported recently of a Cholera outbreak in Iraq.<ref>{{cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |author= |coauthors= |title=U.N. reports cholera outbreak in northern Iraq |url=http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/29/iraq.cholera/index.html |format=HTML |work= |publisher=CNN |id= |pages= |page= |date= |accessdate=2007-08-30 |language=English |quote= }}</ref>
==[[Cholera future or investigational therapies|Future or Investigational Therapies]]==
==[[Cholera future or investigational therapies|Future or Investigational Therapies]]==
The major contributions to fighting cholera were made by physician and self-trained scientist [[John Snow (physician)|John Snow]] (1813-1858), who found the link between cholera and contaminated drinking water in 1854 and Henry Whitehead, an Anglican minister, who helped John Snow track down and verify the source of the disease, an infected well in London. Their conclusions and writings were widely distributed and firmly established for the first time a definite link between germs and disease. Clean water and good sewage treatment, despite their major engineering and financial cost, slowly became a priority throughout the major developed cities in the world from this time onward. [[Robert Koch]], 30 years later, identified ''V. cholerae'' with a microscope as the bacillus causing the disease in 1885. The bacterium had been originally isolated thirty years earlier (1855) by Italian anatomist [[Filippo Pacini]], but its exact nature and his results were not widely known around the world.  
The major contributions to fighting cholera were made by physician and self-trained scientist [[John Snow (physician)|John Snow]] (1813-1858), who found the link between cholera and contaminated drinking water in 1854 and Henry Whitehead, an Anglican minister, who helped John Snow track down and verify the source of the disease, an infected well in London. Their conclusions and writings were widely distributed and firmly established for the first time a definite link between germs and disease. Clean water and good sewage treatment, despite their major engineering and financial cost, slowly became a priority throughout the major developed cities in the world from this time onward. [[Robert Koch]], 30 years later, identified ''V. cholerae'' with a microscope as the bacillus causing the disease in 1885. The bacterium had been originally isolated thirty years earlier (1855) by Italian anatomist [[Filippo Pacini]], but its exact nature and his results were not widely known around the world.  

Revision as of 17:17, 21 February 2012

Template:DiseaseDisorder infobox For patient information click here

Cholera Microchapters

Home

Patient Information

Overview

Historical Perspective

Classification

Pathophysiology

Causes

Differentiating Cholera from other Diseases

Epidemiology and Demographics

Risk Factors

Screening

Natural History, Complications, and Prognosis

Diagnosis

History and Symptoms

Physical Examination

Laboratory Findings

X Ray

CT

MRI

Other diagnostic studies

Treatment

Medical Therapy

Surgery

Primary Prevention

Secondary Prevention

Case Studies

Case #1

Cholera On the Web

Most recent articles

Most cited articles

Review articles

CME Programs

Powerpoint slides

Images

American Roentgen Ray Society Images of Cholera

All Images
X-rays
Echo & Ultrasound
CT Images
MRI

Ongoing Trials at Clinical Trials.gov

US National Guidelines Clearinghouse

NICE Guidance

FDA on Cholera

CDC on Cholera

Cholera in the news

Blogs on Cholera

Directions to Hospitals Treating Cholera

Risk calculators and risk factors for Cholera

Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]

Overview

History & Symptoms

Treatment

Dietary Management | Medical Therapy

Epidemiology & Demographics

Primary Prevention

Risk Factors

Lab Tests

Pathophysiology

Historical perspective

Future or Investigational Therapies

The major contributions to fighting cholera were made by physician and self-trained scientist John Snow (1813-1858), who found the link between cholera and contaminated drinking water in 1854 and Henry Whitehead, an Anglican minister, who helped John Snow track down and verify the source of the disease, an infected well in London. Their conclusions and writings were widely distributed and firmly established for the first time a definite link between germs and disease. Clean water and good sewage treatment, despite their major engineering and financial cost, slowly became a priority throughout the major developed cities in the world from this time onward. Robert Koch, 30 years later, identified V. cholerae with a microscope as the bacillus causing the disease in 1885. The bacterium had been originally isolated thirty years earlier (1855) by Italian anatomist Filippo Pacini, but its exact nature and his results were not widely known around the world.

Cholera has been a laboratory for the study of evolution of virulence. The province of Bengal in British India was partitioned into West Bengal (a state in India) and East Pakistan in 1947. Prior to partition, both regions had cholera pathogens with similar characteristics. After 1947, India made more progress on public health than East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). As a consequence, the strains of the pathogen which succeeded in India had a greater incentive in the longevity of the host and are less virulent than the strains prevailing in Bangladesh, which uninhibitedly draw upon the resources of the host population, thus rapidly killing many in it.

False report of cholera

A persistent myth states that 90,000 people died in Chicago of cholera and typhoid fever in 1885. This story has no factual basis. In 1885 there was a torrential rainstorm that flushed the Chicago river and its attendant pollutants into Lake Michigan far enough that the city's water supply was contaminated. Fortunately, cholera was not present in the city and this is not known to have caused any deaths. It did, however, cause the city to become more serious about their sewage treatment.

Cholera morbus

The term cholera morbus was used in the 19th and early 20th century to describe both non-epidemic cholera and gastrointestinal diseases that mimicked cholera. The term is not in current use, but is found in many older references.[1]

References

External links

eo:Ĥolero he:כולרה ms:Penyakit Taun


Template:WikiDoc Sources