Diseases of 2014 😷 Kora Saint-Lot

        The year 2014 was filled with different events. Some good and some bad. I have done some research and will be writing about what I thought the top three news events were. The three most important events of 2014, in my opinion, were the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa, the ALS awareness raising through the Ice Bucket Challenge and the discovery of an antibiotic for MRSA the resistant bacteria.

         The ebola virus was the most heard of/searched up one of 2014 and it has caused and is still causing thousands of innocents to perish. Ebola according to Oxford Dictionary is: "An infectious and frequently fatal disease marked by fever and severe internal bleeding, spread though contact with infected body fluids by a filovirus (Ebola Virus), whose normal host species is unknown." The virus (shown below in figure 1) has become a world wide scare unlike previous outbreaks when it was localized and managed much better than at the current state. The officials were shocked by the rapidity of the transmission of the virus and they didn't take action as fast as they should have.

Figure 1: Ebola Virus

Unlike the previous outbreaks, localized in Africa, ebola victims have been reported in the US and in Europe. With our easy transportations nowadays (long distance in a short time by airplane) the people carrying the virus, who hadn't showed any symptoms, were able to travel back home and spread the disease to their close ones or medical workers once the symptoms appeared.

         Last year we heard about experimental treatment against the virus for the first time. Some treatments were successful, causing the patient to get better and others failed. One of the survivors Paulina Cafferkey, a nurse working at a Save the Children treatment Center in Sierra Leone. They were giving her an experimental anti-viral drug and blood from survivors of the disease. She recovered completely and was released from the hospital on January 24th 2015.

Figure 2: Paulina working at the Save the Children treatment Center in Sierra Leone.

          Last year the ALS Ice Bucket challenge trended world wide over the internet. It was created by an ALS sufferer called Pete Frates who wanted to raise awareness and money for the ALS Association. ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)  also known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease" is a nerve related disease that kills your motor neurons and stops control over voluntary muscle movement. (figure 2) It's a progressive disease and patients can become totally paralyzed. The cause of ALS is still unknown in approximately 95% of cases and only 5% of ALS cases are inherited from a parents to the children. 

Figure 3: Normal and Affected nerve cells

            In under 24 hours the Ice Bucket challenge trended worldwide and people starting searching up ALS on google more and more to find out what it was and over 1000 people made donations to support the Association (Figure 3). By the end of 2014 they managed to gather over $100million, 50 times more than they had over the previous years. Many celebrities took part in the movement such as: Barak Obama, Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian and many others. This helped spread the word faster than ever and soon enough everyone was doing it and donating money.

Figure 4: Ice Bucket Challenge crowd.

           MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) (seen in pink in figure 5) is an infection that is caused by the resistant strain of staph bacteria. Most of the infections aren't serious but some can be deadly. Usually the bacteria stays on the patients skin causing sores or boils (mild infection) but if it goes deeper into the body it can cause problems in the bloodstream, the lungs, or the urinary tract (serious infection). While some antibiotics still work MRSA is resistant to most antibiotics and adapts really fast.  Finding and antibiotic that kills MRSA has become a challenge but scientist from Northeastern University Boston, USA have managed to grow soil bacteria that produces a powerful antibiotic that, in lab conditions, can eliminate pathogens without facing any detectable resistance. Kim Lewis, a senior scientist on this project, said: “Our impression is that nature produced a compound that evolved to be free of resistance. This challenges the dogma that we’ve operated under that bacteria will always develop resistance. Well, maybe not in this case.” 

Figure 5: MRSA (pink blobs) ingested by human neutrophils

All throughout 2014 deadly diseases were going about and other than doctors no one knew about them. Ebola is incurable for the moment but the experimental drugs are giving people hope that one day we will be able to fight this disease and hopefully never see it again. Thanks to the ALS ice-bucket challenge people are aware of this disease that has taken the lives of many and that is going to continue doing so if we don't help. The cure to MRSA could be closer than we think and with scientists working on it now we can hope for a better tomorrow.