GIANT GERMS
Possibly the only good way to get up close and personal with germs is to get a cute and cuddly Giantmicrobe. Look after them, love them, or simply get your own back for the thousands of years of suffering they've caused the human race. The choice is yours.
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Giantmicrobe - Common Cold
There are over 250 different kinds of cold viruses! But rhinovirus is by far the most common. With over 100 different varieties, rhinoviruses are responsible for almost 35 percent of colds.
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Giantmicrobe - Atheletes Foot
Although a variety of fungi can cause foot rashes, Trichophyton mentagrophytes cause the itchy, cracked skin typically between the fourth and fifth toes.
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Giantmicrobe - Kissing Disease
The kissing disease or mononucleosis is caused by the Epstein Barr virus (named after its discoverers Michael Epstein and Y.M Barr). More than 95% of the population is infected.
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Giantmicrobe - Bad Breath
Many people believe that bad breath or halitosis is caused by gas rising up from the stomach particularly after eating onions or spicy foods. In fact, most cases are caused by microbes such as Porphorymonas gingivalis!
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Giantmicrobe - Ulcer
90-95% of people with ulcers in the stomach, esophagus, and small intestine have the bacteria, and getting rid of the bacteria reduces ulcer recurrence rates to less than 10% a year.
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Giantmicrobe - Ebola
You do not want to get Ebola! A short incubation period of 2-21 days presages symptoms which include fever, aches, sore throat, and weakness, followed by diarrhoea, stomach pain, vomiting, and both internal and external bleeding. And then, for between 50 and 90% of victims, death.
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Giantmicrobe - Black Death
In October 1347, the Black Death arrived in the city of Messina in Sicily. The Plague, which had been raging in Asia had followed the trade routes and stowed away on ships returning from the Black Sea. By 1352, 25 million or a third of Europe's population were dead.
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Giantmicrobe - Bed Bug
Cimex lectularius once had a distinguished career infesting beds, as well as the crevasses found in furniture and behind loose wallpaper and under floorboards.
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Giantmicrobe - Flesh Eating
Flesh-eating disease is no dieter's dream - it's a headline grabbing nightmare most commonly caused by crazed strains of Streptococcus pyogenes.
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Giantmicrobe - Ear ache
Nearly every child gets at least one and most several. Why? Their ear tubes are shorter and straighter than adult tubes, which provides bacteria with easier access.
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Giantmicrobe - Sleeping Sickness
Sleeping sickness infects at least 20,000 people a year (and unreported cases may amount to ten times more) but it is confined to the rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa where the tsetse reside, so you probably just need a good night's rest.
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Giantmicrobe - Lyme Disease
First identified in the 1970's in the United States near Lyme, Connecticut, Lyme Disease is now one of the most commonly reported tick-borne illnesses.
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Giantmicrobe - HIV
H.I.V is a virus that kills the CD4 cells, or T-helper cells, which help the body fight infections. Once the body's immune system has been compromised, a person develops AIDS.
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Giantmicrobe - Hepatitis
There have been seven different forms of viral hepatitis recorded: A, B, C, D, E, F and G. However, Hepatitis F was found to be made up and was subsequently discredited (and no, we haven't made this up!)
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Giantmicrobe - The Clap
The clap, or gonorrhea, is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases. The word 'clap' comes from 'clapier', the old French word for brothel.
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Giantmicrobe - The Pox
The pox burst onto the scene in a 1494 epidemic that occured in the French army, then fighting in Naples. The Italians promptly called it French disease. The French called it Italian disease or Spanish disease. It became Portuguese disease, Polish disease, Russian disease...
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Giantmicrobe - Giardia
A hard outer shell allows giardia to survive in the wide world, but it is most at home in the grear indoors of the human and animal intestine.
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Giantmicrobe - The Pimple
While adults sometimes have acne, nearly 100% of the population suffers breakouts at some point in their teenage years. Propionibacterium acnes is the skin bacteria significantly responsible for the condition.
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Giantmicrobe - TB
TB can infect any part of the body, but typically targets the lungs and throat. Coughing and sneezing by infected persons is the most common cause of transmission.
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Giantmicrobe - Lice
In the trenches of World War I, lice were rampant and the soldiers cropped their hair short to try to avoid the "cooties" - a term thought to derive from the Malay word kutu, or biting parasite, though how the word travelled to the trenches is unknown
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Giantmicrobe - Typhoid Fever
After a week or two incubation period with Salmonella typhi, Typhoid Fever strikes causing hemorrhagic red spots on the chest and abdomen, ulceration of the intestines and an extremely high fever that can last well over a month. Untreated, the mortality rate is as high as 20%.
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Giantmicrobe - Flu Bug
The flu, a.k.a influenza, is a respiratory infection caused by strains of orthomyxoviridus. The word 'influenza' comes from the Italian word for influence back when the stars were thought to influence the start of an epidemic!
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