I’m pretty sure everyone has been told the effects of you accidentally stepping on a rusty nail. Don’t step on a rusty nail, or you’ll get tetanus. Well, that’s not quietly how it works, but you can kinda use that as an idea about how you acquire this disease.
Tetanus is an infection caused by Clostridium tetani. It is an endospore-forming Gram-positive rod. Now, if a bacteria is able to form an endospore that means that it can become dormant and can essentially reactive once it is in hospitable environment in order for it to become vegetative again. This is problematic because endospore are very difficult to kill.
Going back to the concept of the rusty nail, usually rusty nails are found typically in the ground somewhere. It just so happens that that’s where most tetanus endospores are, so since the rusty nail is the ground it can easily have tetanus endospores on it. Tetanus also happens to be an obligate anaerobe, which means it hates oxygen. So let’s just say you’re out in the yard one day gardening, and you get a deep penetrating wound from an old rusty nail. You mostly have just exposed yourself to C. tetani. Now since tetanus is an obligate anaerobe, it’s going to thrive in that deep would because there will not be any oxygen present and it can break its endospore and an come active again. Once it becomes active, C. tetani releases an A-B toxin in the blood called tetanospasmin, which can cause you to experience toxemia. It is not the bacterium that will kill you, but it is the toxin that is released into bloodstream that will.
One of the main symptoms of tetanus is muscle spasms, which is why you here this disease sometimes called “lockjaw” because the jaw is one of the first places to experience involuntary muscle spasms. Other symptoms are fever, headache, changes in blood pressure and heart rate, and even spasms all over the body. If think you have been exposed to tetanus please seek medical attention immediately to receive treatment.
Tetanus is an uncommon and very dangerous disease. Thanks to VACCINATIONS, the United States was able to decrease the deaths of tetanus to 99%. So basically to get this 100%, get vaccinated. I still don’t understand why some parents do not vaccinate their children, but that’s neither here nor there. There are FOUR, not one, not two, not three, but FOUR vaccinations you can get for C. tetani: DTaP, DT, Tdap, and Td. The CDC recommends every child receive five doses and a booster shot every 10 years as an adult to prevent you from contracting the disease.
Kalayah's Krazy Microbes 