As soon as you get sick, you immediately remember what a vile state it is. I myself have recently been ill, which was accompanied by a terrible lingering cough, which did not go away. And no matter how bad it used to be during illness before, it always seems that the current illness is the most difficult. And although this is far from the worst thing that happened to me, it feels exactly like that, because it is happening right now. When you are sick, you see everything differently, and it seems that it cannot be worse and the end of suffering is not foreseen. Unfortunately, there are countless diseases and ways to get them. But few diseases are as dire as those found in the tropics.
By the way, they are not all infectious. Some of them are extremely contagious and spread like wildfire, while others are simply chronic, but no less dangerous. The consequence of the disease can be that you fall asleep indefinitely, catch internal parasites, or all the holes in your body begin to bleed. And if you are going on vacation in the tropics, beware of the various infections and diseases that are common in these regions. Here are 15 bizarre tropical diseases that make the common flu or common cold seem like the best thing that can happen to a person. Also take a look at the article 10 diseases with the most expensive treatments.
15. Elephantiasis
Elephantiasis is not only a disease. This is often a symptom of other medical conditions, so don't be surprised to find this word. In essence, elephantiasis is when some part or part of the body swells to grotesque proportions. Sometimes it is a sign of an immune disease that affects the blood vessels, in other cases it is a side effect of the parasitic worms infecting the body. You might be interested in article 10 disgusting parasites inside the body.
We will talk about the last option, but now we need to find out that elephantiasis is a very painful condition. For the most part, it affects the limbs, in rare cases, the genitals. For comparison, elephantiasis is much more painful than if you were hit in this place.
14. Progeria
Progeria is an incredibly rare genetic disorder in which a young body ages very quickly. If you have ever seen children who look like little old people, it is very likely that you have seen just a case of this disease. Unfortunately, this aging is not just a cosmetic defect: Affected children rarely live to their mid-teens or 20s. Even worse, predisposition to this disease cannot be detected in advance.
The genetic mutation that causes Progeria is a new pathology, that is, it is not inherited. Either way, children with Progeria very rarely live to the age when they could pass on their genetic disease to their offspring, so when someone else gets sick, the cause is an abnormal gene mutation. In fact, Progeria is Benjamin Button's disease, with the difference that Brad Pitt in this role became younger with age. I wonder if the movie about Benjamin Button is connected with the appearance of this mutation?
13. Fibrodysplasia (FOP)
FOP - ossifying progressive fibrodysplasia. One way or another, FOP is caused by a mutation in a part of the body that begins to "repair" myself. Fibrous tissues of the body, such as muscles, tendons, and ligaments, stop working. The body is trying to heal itself, but is using the wrong materials. When scientists performed autopsies on patients with FOP, they found that ligaments and muscles were replaced by bone, which is definitely not what you would like to find in parts of the body that are designed to move.
In case of injuries, the damaged joints ossify in this position completely. Children with FOP are born with deformed big toes, the first symptoms of the disease appear before the age of ten. Due to the fact that FOP is an incredibly rare disease, many doctors, when faced with it for the first time, diagnose cancer or fibrosis.
12. Alice in Wonderland Syndrome
This is a strange disease, and this weirdness is of a completely different kind than the franchise "Alice in Wonderland". Alice in Wonderland Syndrome is a neurological condition that affects the way you see the world. Usually affects children and adults with sleep disorders. People with Alice Syndrome often feel that their body or parts of it are larger or smaller than they really are - and this is worse than you think. For no apparent reason, different objects become larger or smaller.
Like elephantiasis, Alice's syndrome is often a symptom of deeper problems. For example, one of the symptoms of the syndrome is migraine, but migraines themselves can provoke the appearance of this disease. People suffering from various neurological diseases often have to deal with Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. And this is not at all the rabbit hole you would like to get into. Also take a look at article 10 Common Causes of Mental Illness.
11. Dracunculiasis
Dracunculiasis is caused by parasitic worms from the group Dracunculus medinensis... They live in polluted water, and when people drink water contaminated by the worms themselves or their larvae, they enter the human body. In remote African settlements, where there is no clean drinking water, people often encounter dracunculiasis.
The parasites that enter the human stomach infect the entire body, and after a few months the larvae turn into adults, reaching almost a meter in length and as thick as spaghetti, which crawl out of the feet right through the skin. To ease the pain, people put their feet in the water, infecting it, and it starts all over again. How awful and disgusting it is.
Fortunately, global health authorities believe that dracunculiasis may be one of the first parasitic diseases to be eradicated worldwide. There are still outbreaks of the disease, but according to statistics from 2014, the number of cases fell from three and a half million every year to 126 in 2014.
10. Ebola
Ebola is causing people to panic. It is, of course, easy to panic or become paranoid about an illness that causes hemorrhagic fever and bleeding from all parts of the body. Ebola is spread through body fluids or even the air, and semen and breast milk can hold the virus for months. The virus is spread by fruit bats that are not susceptible to it. Ebola infects almost everything in the human body and kills, on average, about half of those infected, depending on which country you were in when you got sick.
It all starts with a fever, sore throat and headache - which can be easily confused with the flu. But this delusion will disappear when the kidneys and liver stop working as they should. And when there is internal and external bleeding, the flu will seem like a welcome option. Coping with an outbreak in the human community is very difficult because it is difficult to treat and very easily transmitted.
9. African sleeping sickness
African trypanosomiasis, or African sleeping sickness, is another disease caused by parasites carried by the tsetse fly. Fever, headaches and itching occur within 1-3 weeks after the bite. The next stage of the disease occurs in a few weeks or even months, when confusion and loss of sensitivity appear. Oddly enough, at this stage, you can face sleep disturbances.
The disease interferes with the brain's ability to tell when to go to bed, which can make a person sleep all day and stay awake at night. And to top it off, you will be faced with a host of other neurological symptoms such as disorientation, paralysis, and signs of Parkinson's disease. With this disease, it is important to start treatment quickly, otherwise the patient falls into a coma, the organs fail and the person dies. Sleep literally turns into death.
8. Brain-eating amoebas
Naegleria fowleri Is a parasitic amoeba that actually eats away at the brain. It lives in fresh water and waits for you to sniff it in. From there, the amoeba enters the brain, where it begins to eat its way through the brain tissue. This is a long process, so I will only list the symptoms. Oddly enough, these amoebas live quietly, eating ordinary bacteria, until they enter the human brain, where they suddenly acquire an appetite for neurons and astrocytes.
It usually takes between one and twelve days (an average of five) before symptoms appear, and when this occurs, vomiting, fever, and headache begin, followed by cramps, hallucinations, and a stiff neck. And if symptoms appear, it is too late for treatment: death occurs within a couple of weeks.
7. Kuru disease
Kuru disease is an incredibly rare neurodegenerative disease that is rapidly spreading among the Fore tribe in New Guinea. This is a prion disease in which prions (special protein molecules) form misfolded molecules, leading to symptoms such as tremors and neurodegenerative disorders in the brain, which can be seen in the picture above. In the Fore languageKuru"Means"shaking».
You may be wondering how prion proteins are spread between people, because usually diseases are not transmitted with proteins. It turns out that the Kuru disease appeared because in the Fore tribe it was customary to eat the deceased family members during the funeral. Members of the tribe became infected by eating the brains that contain this protein. What is the conclusion from this? Don't eat people, especially at funerals.
6. Nodding syndrome
Unlike many of the listed diseases, nodding syndrome is a relatively new disease. It appeared sometime in the 60s in Sudan. It is a mentally and physically debilitating disease that affects children between the ages of five and fifteen. The child has a delay in development and growth. The disease is called nodding syndrome because of seizures that resemble nods. The seizures start when the child eats or is slightly cold. If he stops eating or warms up, the cramps will subside.
In 2004, neurotoxicology expert Peter Spencer stated: “According to all studies, it is a progressive, fatal disease that can last for about three years or longer.". It is not known what exactly causes the disease, but the mainstream theory is that a parasite may be the cause. Onchocerca volvulus, very common in areas where cases of nodding syndrome have been found. Also, apparently, the disease is associated with the state of Ei in South Sudan, where most of the sick children live. Onchocerca volvulus also causes river blindness, which we will discuss later.
5. Leishmaniasis
To be honest, this disease is terrifying. Leishmaniasis is caused by parasites carried by mosquitoes, and can be cutaneous, mucocutaneous and visceral (i.e., related to internal organs). The cutaneous variant of the disease is characterized by ulcers, which, of course, is not at all fun. But the mucocutaneous version is even worse: ulcers appear not only on the skin, but in the mouth and nose too.
The visceral form is the most severe: it begins with ulcers on the skin, then through the blood the infection penetrates into the internal organs, which leads to an increase in the spleen and liver. Some of the above diseases have been eradicated, but leishmaniasis still exists today. There are about 12 million cases in 98 countries of the world. Each year, approximately two million new cases of the disease are recorded and every year between twenty and fifty thousand people die.
200 million people live in areas where leishmaniasis is a big problem, even animals. Awareness about the disease is growing and there are drugs available, but nevertheless, it is still a long time before we can say that leishmaniasis is a thing of the past.
4. Leprosy
Many of these diseases are less than a century old, but leprosy has been around since biblical times. Leprosy used to be considered a skin disease due to ulcers appearing on the skin, but now we have more information. In fact, leprosy is a nervous disease that may not show symptoms for five to 20 years. From this moment, granulomas appear not only on the skin, but also on the nerve fibers and even in the eyes. They affect a person's ability to feel pain and damage their eyesight, which is not surprising given the places they affect.
Although leprosy is a big problem for the sufferer, it is not as contagious as it is thought to be. It is spread by coughing or contact with nasal secretions from a sick person. It seems that the danger of infection is great, but in reality it is not. Maybe we think so because the symptoms appear after a very long time. Fortunately, leprosy is now curable, you only have to take medicine for six months.
3. Lymphatic filariasis
Remember we talked about elephantiasis? Before that, we considered it as a symptom, but now we will talk about it as a disease. Lymphatic filariasis is caused by parasitic worms. The disease is usually asymptomatic, but some people develop elephantiasis. Other symptoms include skin rashes, papules (a type of skin rash) on the eyes, and arthritis. Lymphatic filariasis is spread by parasitic worms, the human body practically does not care what kind of parasite was.
The incidence depends on many factors: from the worm itself, from the bacteria that it carries, from the immune system of an infected person and what infections the sick person already has. The parasite can cause a lot of trouble, which is why the World Health Organization often carries out antiparasitic measures in places where there is a high risk of infection in order to prevent the spread of the disease.
2. Malaria
Malaria is an infectious disease affecting humans and animals caused by protozoa that parasitize humans. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, headaches, and in severe cases, seizures, yellowing of the skin, followed by coma and death. Malaria, due to the variety of symptoms, can look like a bunch of different diseases, such as blood poisoning, gastroenteritis and various viral diseases.
Among them, febrile paroxysm stands out, when a person during the day is thrown into a fever, then into a cold. Depending on the strain of the malaria infection, this can happen every two, three, or four days. Not only is the disease itself serious, but the possible complications, among which there are many respiratory diseases, are even worse, it also exacerbates the signs of HIV infection.
1. River blindness
We have already mentioned river blindness because Onchocerca volvulus can be the cause of not only this disease. So other diseases caused by this parasite can result in river blindness. The good news is that for a person to become infected with river blindness, you need to be bitten by many flies that spread the disease. The bad news is that there is no vaccine against this virus, and if you live in areas where there are many of these flies, it will be problematic to protect yourself from bites.
When the larvae enter the body, they grow, reproduce and begin to look for a way out.Since the disease affects the eyes, the patient can literally see how the larvae move inside the eye, which is definitely troubling. This tropical disease has received little attention as it is not common today, but the fact that the larvae are visible inside the eyes, and the fact that the treatment does not kill adults and does not remove the nodules under the skin formed during the disease, has caused it was this disease that took the first line of our list.
We recommend watching:
An interesting video telling about the history of the emergence of "tropical" diseases and various viruses.
