Babies are so weird!

We were talking about pediatric sickle cell anemia, and my professor showed this picture while he talked about prenatal screening. I thought it was incredible and eerie.

Pretty...Infectious?

We're STILL doing infectious disease (though we have recently graduated from bacterial infections to virology), and although most of the time is spent on the terrible things that these pathogens can do (seriously, I don't ever want to see another genital ulcer) not a lot of time is spent ... admiring them. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want everyone going around and getting a virus or something just because I think they are pretty! But for sure, something should be said about the shape of things, no?

Here we have a picture of Treponema pallidum- the culprit for syphilis. This bug is a type of bacteria called a spirochete: thin, slender, helically coiled organisms. (Even it's description is beautiful!) But, just a word of advice: don't get the syph. Unless you are particularly fond of rashes and ulcers. Gross!




The adenovirus. This little guy is the cause of some pretty severe respiratory and enteric distress, usually in close populations of young adults (cough, college, cough). But I kind of think that it looks like a firecracker that's sending off sparks.



For some reason, I feel like biology really likes to use crowns in their descriptions of things (corona radiata, anyone?) and so I thought I'd include Coronavirus into the mix. Remember the SARS epidemic? That was a type of our royal majesty. Also, along with the rhinovirus it's one of the major causes of the common cold. So make sure to say hi to it for me this winter!



That's all for now, because really, I should be studying. What should YOU be doing right now?

<3,
F


(All pictures/info from Dr. S and V's lectures.)

Don't Stand So Close To Me

We all know that it's gross to be sprayed by another person's sneeze. But just how extensive is the spray? Let's take a look...





And each of those droplets can house any number of bacteria that can get into your mouth and become lodged into your upper respiratory tract to give you their cold. Some can even become dessicated into "droplet nuclei" that are so small that they can go straight into your alveoli (the functional units of your lungs) and cause pneumonia.

So uhm, keep your mouth shut when people open theirs.

[Photos from Dr. V's lecture]