Why an increase in Disease Outbreaks, part 1

It seems like everyday we hear about another outbreak of something. Many of these outbreaks are of diseases of old, like mumps and measles, and others are fairly new, like the CRE infections spreading across the United States. This chapter of Fever Rising takes a look at the many bacterial and viral infections that are out there and why methane gas may be responsible for the upticks in disease over the past few years. Here are two links first though. The first one is the last chapter and then if you click into the volcanoes thread, you can find the links to the first ten threads in this series of chapters from my book.

Why an increase in Mass Animal Die-offs
How methane gas is responsible for increasing volcanoes

Chapter 15: The Dangerous Gas Theory and Disease Outbreaks

You may be asking yourself how diseases and pandemics have anything to do with dangerous gases and atmospheric heating. It’s simple really. There are various types of microbes that eat methane. They live deep underground and they live 30,000 feet into the air. Basically, they are everywhere and they feed off methane hydrates.

The theory goes something like this. The more methane increases it becomes a feeding frenzy for the microbes. What happens when these microbes have more than enough to eat? They multiply. As methane release escalates, there is naturally going to be a rapid increase in the microbes that feed.

Through the evolution of bacteria over millions of years you can expect that other species of bacteria can also experience growth. As one species of bacteria rapidly increases, others will follow. I propose in this theory that as the microbes continuously feed on the increased methane hydrates, other bacteria are following the lead, thus, literally thousands of species of bacteria and viruses are experiencing phenomenal growth all over the planet.

To back this idea up, let’s first take a look at what bacteria really are. Bacteria are made up of the same genetic stuff that we are, only we have our DNA stored in the nucleus of the cytoplasm of a cell, while bacteria DNA isn’t stored in the nucleus. Their DNA is stored in the cytoplasm without a nucleus and that gives way for genetic mutation. The bacteria are made up of a genetic material called plasmids, which are small ring-like structures that float in the cell. They are separate from the chromosomal DNA and each has a specific job. One plasmid will cause the production of a chemical which negates antibiotic a, while another plasmid will cause the production of a chemical which negates antibiotic b. Then there is horizontal and vertical transfer of the plasmids to other bacteria. Vertical transfer is when a bacterium transfers the plasmid through its offspring, but it’s the horizontal transfer that may be responsible for the rapid rise in disease. This is when a plasmid replicates itself independently of the host cell and a single bacterium transfers a copy of that plasmid to every bacterium within range, and this includes bacterium of another species.

If you’ve followed news headlines over the past two years then you’ve noticed a rise in disease outbreaks or resistance to drugs to fight these diseases. You’re not imagining things if you’ve questioned whether these diseases seem to be getting stronger. The flu virus that normally lasted less than a week now persists for two to three weeks even four weeks at times as was my case in December, 2013.

Let’s take a look at the microbes that feed off methane. These are called methanotrophs. There are two separate groups of methanotrophs, those that feed off oxygen in the atmosphere (aerobic) or those that thrive in the absence of oxygen underground (anaerobic).

Aerobic methanotrophs are usually found in soils near methane-rich environments, such as oceans, landfills, underground environments, mud and bogs, and rice paddies.

A March 24, 2010 article that Nature.com published found that a new species of methane-eating bacteria lives in environments without oxygen and produce their own. The article, “Methane-eating microbes make their own oxygen,” authored by Amanda Leigh Mascarelli, stated the new bacteria survives by producing and “breathing” its own oxygen.

“The oxygen-producing bacterium, provisionally named Methylomirabilis oxyfera, grows in a layer of methane-rich but oxygen-poor mud at the bottom of rivers and lakes. The microbes live on a diet of methane and nitrogen oxides, such as nitrite and nitrate. These nitrogen-containing compounds are especially abundant in sediment contaminated by agricultural runoff.”

Prior to this discovery, there were only three known pathways that bacteria could produce oxygen. Those were photosynthesis, bacteria reduction of chlorates(ClO3– and ClO4–) and the enzymatic conversion of reactive oxygen species. Now, a new pathway is known where microbes extract energy fom methane through a chemical process linked to dentrification, which releases nitrogen and oxygen from nitrogen oxides.
This new bacteria survives in methane-rich areas that are can’t support other bacteria. It does this by combining two molecules of nitric oxide to form nitrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is then used to metabolize methane to produce water and carbon dioxide.

The only two known types of methane-consuming bacteria before this discovery lived in either the absence of oxygen (anaerobic methanotrophs) or exploit oxygen from the atmosphere (aerobic methanotrophs).

The Nature.com article concludes by talking about the evolution of methane-eating bacteria and which one came first, the aerobic methanotrophs that scientists know so much about, or these newly-discovered guys. Some of them worry though that this new species may have been born recently due to the increase in these methane-rich environments that may have been produced by man.

Either way, there are methane-eating microbes everywhere especially in the present day with the amount of methane to feed the hungry little buggers. To actually have bacteria that can thrive without ever having any oxygen at all shows the tenacity of these bugs. And if that’s not tenacious enough, here is another eye-opening article that describes the discovery of bacteria floating in the atmosphere at 30,000 feet.

A group of scientists hitched a ride on NASA aircraft nine times to sample air before, after and during hurricanes Earl and Karl in 2010. The group flew six miles above the surface, into the upper troposphere, where they ran outside air over a series of filters capturing material from an average of 212 cubic feet of ambient air.

Sky-high bacteria could affect climate, scientists say
Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2013
By Amina Khan
The researchers focused on a ribosomal RNA gene called SSU rRNA, which can reliably identify bacterial species. They calculated that there were about 144 bacterial cells per cubic foot of air.

The bacteria accounted for 20% of the particles in their size range — stuff that scientists had assumed was just sea salt and dust.
"We were surprised," Nenes said.

The microbial populations were very different before and after a storm, Nenes said; that makes sense, given that hurricanes have the potential to kick a fresh batch of bugs into the air.

Continued...

The scientists said in their report that these microbes are floating at 30,000 feet, in an atmosphere that they had previously assumed was just sea salt and dust. They tested the air before and after a hurricane and they assume it’s these storms that lift the bacteria high up into the atmosphere and that it floats along in the jet stream and has to come down somewhere.

The article claimed the scientists found Escherichia and Streptococcus bacteria. They found 17 types of bacteria. All these bacteria catching a ride on hurricane-force winds to 30,000 feet then feeding on the high amounts of methane rising to these levels could lead to a dangerous recipe. As I mentioned earlier, the more to feed, the more growth the bacteria will experience.

Not only do the scientists claim these bacteria six miles above us could affect weather patterns, but they state that they may also carry disease to far away places. I propose we take this a step further and suggest that these bacteria, traveling in packs, are the cause of mutating strains of virus and drug-resistant bacteria popping up all over the planet today. They have plenty of food in the methane-rich environments in the mud, in the oceans, deep underground and now, high in the atmosphere. Plenty of food means that there will be rapid growth in their numbers, at first for the microbes feeding off the methane, but then, for all other species within range as I previously described with horizontal transfer.

Over the winter of 2012-13, there were numerous stories in the news about superbugs, or bugs that have become resistant to the drugs that we’ve used to fight them. That’s not a good sign of the times. Common viruses that we’ve learned to fight are mutating into much stronger and more deadly strains. Have you asked yourself lately why so many diseases you’ve grown up with are now unnerving to think about? News article after news article the same theme rings true; viruses have mutated and bacteria’s have learned to resist the current-known drugs.

Now we’ll examine a dozen different bugs that have made headlines lately starting with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). This disease was first detected in the United States in 2001. According to the Minnesota Department of Health website, CRE causes a variety of infections that include pneumonia, bloodstream, wound and urinary tract infections.

To date, healthy people usually don’t catch CRE infections. It’s been regulated to persons with chronic medical conditions, prolonged stays in health care settings, those with medical devices such as intravenous catheters and people taking antibiotics over long periods of time but it became resistant to antibiotics to anyone who caught it, according to a USA Today story, “Deadly super bugs invade U.S. health care facilities.” The story, written by Peter Eisler, was published March 6, 2013.

According to the story, doctors tried one antibiotic after another in an attempt to save a man as the infection tore through his body. They even used “drugs of last resort,” but they failed and the man died a few months later.

The infectious-disease specialist at the University of Virginia Medical Center, Amy Mathers, said they were surprised because they had never seen that kind of resistance. She said they didn’t know what to offer the patient. The bacterium wasn’t done. In the following months it struck again and again at the hospital, in various forms.

According to the USA Today article, the superbug remains a threat. It belongs to a once-obscure family of drug-resistant bacteria that has stalked U.S. hospitals and nursing homes for over a decade. Many health professionals fear that they are encountering a fight they can’t win because of its ability to defeat even the most potent antibiotics. Death rates among patients with CRE infections can be about 40%, far worse than other, better-known health care infections such as MRSA or C-Diff, which have plagued hospitals and nursing homes for decades.

“Since the first known case, at a North Carolina hospital, was reported in 2001, CREs have spread to at least 41 other states, according to the CDC. And many cases still go unrecognized, because it can be tough to do the proper laboratory analysis, particularly at smaller hospitals or nursing homes,” according to the USA Today article.

The man died within three months and the disease wasn’t finished. It continued to ravage the weakest victims in the hospital spreading throughout in different forms confusing the doctors who couldn’t discover the secret to how the bug was spreading.

The deadly superbug has been widening throughout health institutions over recent years picking off the weakest of patients. The bug shows up in different forms such as urinary tract infections or pneumonia.

This dangerous drug-resistant bacterium has now spread to 41 states and though it remains contained to health care facilities, professionals fear that it may make the jump into the general public. That would be a serious threat to the public because this strain of CRE sweeping across the nation’s health care facilities has defeated even the most potent antibiotics. This has conjured fears among the professionals of illnesses that can’t be stopped.

It’s truly not known how wide spread CRE really is because there isn’t any national data base or tracking of the disease. The CDC is urging the medical community to start tracking, but only a few are doing it. It’s also much harder to actually track because of the variety of infections CRE comes in, such as pneumonia, that many times it isn’t correctly diagnosed.

CRE is a very real threat that receives little to no attention whatsoever from the main stream media. This USA Today story is the only story you will find if you do a Google search for CRE. There are a lot of informational web pages on state health sites and the CDC government site, but that’s it. Why is the MSM afraid to tell us about this genuine threat?

Doctors from the article in the USA Today admit that there isn’t much hope anything can be done about this disease. There isn’t enough money in it for drug companies to try to develop new antibiotics so the focus will be on prevention. This isn’t the prognosis that anyone is looking for. Essentially, we have no drugs to fight this disease, it’s spreading rapidly throughout the United States, and so far it’s contained to medical facilities but there is a very real possibility that it will jump into the general public, and then, we may have a real pandemic on our hands. The death rate for this disease stands at 40%, but keep in mind so far the disease has only struck among the elderly and those with chronic illnesses.

Another disease that has been on the rise in the last two years is Pertussis (Whooping Cough). The year 2012 had the most reported cases since a vaccine was developed for it in the 1950’s. This disease mostly affects young children and can sometimes be deadly to infants. Here is another story showing that this was another disease on the rise in 2012 with 18 deaths.

Continued...

Examiner.com
By Jennifer Cruz
2012 was a record year for whooping cough cases. On Sunday, Jan. 6, ABC News 23 stated that approximately 42,000 cases of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, were reported last year. This has been the largest outbreak of pertussis since 1955. The sudden spike in the condition has left many unanswered questions about the disease itself and, more importantly, the effectiveness of the vaccine.

The pertussis vaccine is given in three separate doses at ages two, four and six months and boosters again at 15-18 months, 4-6 years, 10 years and again as an adult, for a total of at least seven doses. It is given in a shot containing the vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, known as DTaP.

According to Dr. Anne Schuchat, director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Center for Disease Control, stated that about half of the cases involved infants under the age of 3 months, but yet the first dose is given at two months. She then argues that the high number of cases in infants is due to the fact that at that young age the vaccine doesn’t yet work properly.

In just the state of Vermont alone they have declared an epidemic of the disease that carried into 2013. In Vermont there were 612 cases of which 90% had been vaccinated. What has the medical community recommended for this situation? More vaccines! Now they want to up the doses and they are pushing for pregnant women to get vaccinated in the hopes that it will make the new born baby be immune to it.

With pertussis we have a vaccine that worked for 50 years suddenly proving ineffective to the disease. Ineffective vaccines, resistance to antibiotics and bacterial mutations are certainly becoming the new normal as is the case with pneumonia and its resistance to drugs in 2012.

An outbreak of pneumonia struck a clinic in Bethesda, Md., that infected 17 patients killing 6 of them. This particular hospital, the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, is known to be one of the best research hospitals in the nation, and yet, it spread it got past their defenses. They imposed stringent isolation and sterilization procedures.

According to a New York Times editorial on August 28, 2012, “A woman who was already infected with the resistant strain of the bacteria entered the hospital. She was placed in strict isolation, stayed in the hospital for a month and left without seeming to spread the germ to others. Then, a few weeks later, another patient was found infected, and many others followed over a period of months.”

After some study, the hospital discovered that the bacteria could remain undetected for weeks. They also found out that it could be spread in complex ways. For instance, germs lurked in sink drains in cleaned rooms. They eventually had to remove plumbing.

A top British health official warned in January of 2013 that bacteria resistance to drugs is more of a threat to humanity than global warming. Of course, she’s referring to the carbon emissions type of global warming, not the theory I propose here. Though I’m not trying to diminish the extent of the threat we face against these diseases, this is just one of the many catastrophic threats we face. The British official warns that resistance to drugs is rising at an alarming rate and that there are no new antibiotics in the pipeline.

Expert Warning: Resistance to antibiotics to be apocalyptic
Medicalxpress.com, January 25, 2013
By Lin Edwards
Professor Dame Sally Davies spoke to British members of parliament on a science and technology committee and told them the increasing resistance of bacteria could soon make even a routine operation a deadly option because of the possibility of an infection that would have no effective treatment. She said that the real "apocalyptic scenario" was that within a couple of decades people will die from infections because we will have "run out of antibiotics" and there are no wonder drugs in the pipeline. She added that it is a serious global problem and antibiotics are not being used effectively.

The professor told members of Parliament that the development of antibiotics in the 1940s was one of the greatest advancements in medicine, but, drugs are becoming more resistant to them. She added that 150,000 deaths occur globally from multi-antibiotic resistant tuberculosis each year, 80% of gonorrhea cases are resistant to the last drug to fight the disease, and common infections, such as staph and urinary tract, are now resistant to penicillin.

Professor Davies warns there are no wonder drugs in the pipeline. Pharmaceutical companies are more concerned with profits and the big bucks lie in finding medications for chronic illnesses rather than antibiotics. This means there is little to no research for curing bacterial illnesses. As we head into this uncertain future with deadly gases changing our planet on an unknown timeline, we face a world that our grandparents faced, of deadly bacterial diseases without antibiotics. Think about this for a minute. Common ailments such as a scratch, or a strep throat, can lead to death. Regardless of my theory about the deadly gases, this is a real and serious threat to our future.

In the story featuring Prof. Davies, she states that there is only one cure left for gonorrhea and that it’s ineffective in 80% of cases. Here is a story about drug-resistant gonorrhea. More than 700,000 Americans get gonorrhea every year but it’s always been a simple disease to treat with a course of antibiotics. That isn’t the case anymore. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association warned that a class of antibiotics known as cephalosporins has weakened all around the world and that the resistance had reached North America. This has public health officials worried.

Drug-resistant gonorrhea has come to North America
Salon.com, January 10, 2013
by Katie McDonough
Head researcher Vanessa Allen, of Public Health Ontario, examined people who were treated for gonorrhea with cefixime (a cephalosporin) at a clinic in Toronto. Of the 133 patients who received treatment, 6.77 percent failed to respond to medication — meaning one in 15 patients had contracted the drug-resistant super strain. And a recent piece in the New Yorker reports that some public-health officials believe the superbug will be widespread in as little as five years.

These are troubling indicators, says Robert Kirkcaldy of the Division of STD Prevention at the CDC. In an essay that appears in the same issue of the journal, Kirkcaldy writes that there are no proven alternative treatments currently available and that “the antibiotic pipeline is running dry.”

Tuberculosis is another respiratory infection that mostly strikes the elderly and young children. It’s also growing resistant to drugs. On a worldwide scale, tuberculosis is common and has been since ancient times. It’s a very ugly disease that can strike any where in the body beyond the lungs where it’s most prevalent. It causes night sweats, fatigue, coughing and coughing up blood as well as fever and weight loss. Although tuberculosis is endemic in third world countries, especially sub-Saharan Africa (due to weak immune systems from HIV), it declined sharply in developed nations due to detection methods and antibiotics. That has changed and the disease is on the rise in these countries as well.

Continued...

TB cases increasingly resistant to all drugs, study warns
Guardian.com, Aug. 30, 2012
By Sarah Boseley, health editor
The paper, in the Lancet Medical Journal, that nearly half (47%) of TB cases that were already resistant to the two basic antibiotics used as standard treatment were also resistant to one of the second-line drugs that doctors try when the standard combination fails. The problem was worst in Latvia, where 62% of multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR TB) was not susceptible to at least one second-line drug.

The researchers also found a worrying increase in cases that were resistant to the entire class of oral second-line antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones, as well as one of the injectables – which is the criteria for being categorised as extensively drug-resistant (XDR TB). Overall, they found that 6.7% of patients with drug-resistant strains had XDR TB, which is very hard and expensive to treat and takes years rather than months in affluent nations.

The lead author of the study, Tracy Dalton, said that drug-resistant TB is more difficult and costly to treat, and more often fatal.

"Internationally, it is particularly worrisome in areas with fewer resources and less access to effective therapies. As more individuals are diagnosed with, and treated for, drug-resistant TB, more resistance to second-line drugs is expected to emerge," Dalton said.

Do we see an alarming trend here? Are there not enough articles showing the evidence that more and more bacteria are becoming frighteningly drug-resistant. Doctors and professionals in each story echoing the same fear…drugs are becoming ineffective to fight off disease and pharmaceutical companies are making too much money off treatment of cancers and the like to make new antibiotics. That spells disaster in the making.

There's more to come from this chapter in a thread I'll post later.

Think about the influx of illegal immigrants, where they came from, and their medical demographic. It's pretty obvious what happened.

Good thread though. Stars and a flag for you.

Can you smell the sick ones? Is it the Methane we should be sniffing around for? Is the dust that fertilizes the oceans, from Africa, going to cause more ebola fever?

# 386

originally posted by: TheWhiteKnight
Can you smell the sick ones? Is it the Methane we should be sniffing around for? Is the dust that fertilizes the oceans, from Africa, going to cause more ebola fever?

# 386

Methane is odorless. You're thinking of hydrogen sulfide if you're looking for a smelly gas.

originally posted by: Snarl
Think about the influx of illegal immigrants, where they came from, and their medical demographic. It's pretty obvious what happened.

Good thread though. Stars and a flag for you.

The rush of illegals last year may have brought in some illnesses, don''t doubt that at all, but the increase in disease outbreaks has been going on for a few more years than that. And, my thread doesn't refer to only the United States, but the worldwide increase in disease.

This was very well researched and very interesting to read. Ty.

Here is part 2 to this thread

Why the increase in Disease Outbreaks, part 2

a reply to: Rezlooper

excellent thread, very well researched and well written, a ,good read as well, not dry or boring at all

I enjoyed this chapter of your book like the previous ones it was well done and presented.
Off I go to part two of this one.
Thank you Rezlooper.

Regards, Iwinder

originally posted by: Iwinder
I enjoyed this chapter of your book like the previous ones it was well done and presented.
Off I go to part two of this one.
Thank you Rezlooper.

Regards, Iwinder

yw iwinder, and thanks for reading.

originally posted by: research100
a reply to: Rezlooper

excellent thread, very well researched and well written, a ,good read as well, not dry or boring at all

Thanks a lot research, glad your're reading and enjoying the read.

originally posted by: Iamthatbish
This was very well researched and very interesting to read. Ty.

Thank you iamthatbish, and thanks for reading.

a reply to: Rezlooper

Good stuff, very interesting and a lot of merit in your hypothesis.

F&S&

originally posted by: soficrow
a reply to: Rezlooper

Good stuff, very interesting and a lot of merit in your hypothesis.

F&S&

Thank you, Soficrow.