Typhus is a group of bacterial diseases caused by rickettsia bacteria infection. It is zoonotic, meaning that the illness passes from infected animals to humans. Fleas, mites, and lice are some examples of typical carriers.

Typhus is more common in underdeveloped areas, but it can be found worldwide. One thing people are still unclear about is if typhus is deadly. Can this disease kill you? Discover more about typhus and its effects below.

How Deadly Is Typhus?

The earlier you visit a doctor and receive proper treatment for typhus, the better your recovery period will be. There are three types of typhus – epidemic, endemic, and scrub. Endemic and epidemic are the two main types. The longer you wait to receive a diagnosis or treatment, the more damage you cause to your health.

Untreated endemic typhus has a death rate of under .2% of patients. In contrast, untreated epidemic typhus has a death rate of 10% – 60% of infected patients. People over 60 years old have the highest death rates. Even if someone does not die from typhus, complications can make things very difficult. Some examples are renal insufficiency, pneumonia, and central nervous system problems.

Generally, physicians recommend antibiotic therapy for endemic, and epidemic typhus infections since early treatment can cure most infected individuals. Some antibiotics you may be placed on include azithromycin, doxycycline, and tetracycline. If treatment is delayed and complications become very severe, patients may die.

Prevention

To avoid typhus, the best thing to do is stay away from rodents and wild animals. Also, be wary of any animals that may carry mites, fleas, and ticks on their bodies. If you have pets, ensure that they avoid contact with rodents or animals that may spread fleas or mites. You can lower your risk of infection by limiting how pests can enter your home.

There was a vaccine for typhus during World War II, but the shrinking number of cases halted its production. The easiest way to prevent typhus is by shielding yourself from pests.

Some prevention tips are:

• Maintain adequate hygiene (guards against infected lice)
• Control the rodent population (rodents carry arthropods)
• Avoid traveling to regions where typhus exposure has occurred, or low sanitation is a high risk
• Take advantage of medicine (Ex. chemoprophylaxis)

Passport Health can advise you on what you may need to avoid typhus while abroad. Make sure you are protected by calling or book online to schedule your appointment today.

Written for Passport Health by Shelbi Jackson. Shelbi is a freelance writer from Illinois. She enjoys writing about various topics from health care to music and book reviews. In her free time, you can find her at a live event, taking a stroll outside, or playing with the family dogs.

If you’re a diabetic, eating foods high in fiber at regular intervals is important to maintaining good health. It’s also important to limit foods high in simple carbohydrates and saturated fats. Keeping up with this type of lifestyle while traveling doesn’t have to be frustrating. Many countries offer delicious street food options that fit nicely into a diabetic diet and won’t cause uncomfortable spikes in blood sugar.

Malaysia

Malaysia may not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of countries with diabetic-friendly street food. Though many traditional Malay dishes are served with or over rice, there are a host of other low-carb, high fiber options . Take Rojak, for example. Rojak is a typical Malaysian salad made of a variety of fruits and vegetables mixed in shrimp sauce and topped with crushed peanuts. Depending on the season, fruits and vegetables that make up Rojak usually consist of beets, cucumbers, mangoes, bean sprouts and green apples. Free of added sugars and filled with fiber, Rojak is a great dish for diabetics. Its high fiber content helps to metabolize carbohydrates while its low sugar content won’t cause spikes and crashes.

The streets of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, are also consistently decorated with engaging and exciting food vendors. This makes it easy to have easy access to food, helping you maintain stable blood sugar levels.

India

With its impressive size, diverse culture and invigorating cuisine, the streets of India are calling all diabetics. In the south of India, the diabetic traveler can find an impressively flavorful midday snack known as Masala Vada. Masala Vada is a traditional lentil fritter made of a combination of chana dal, onions, ginger, curry leaves, fennel seeds, dried red hot peppers, vegetable oil and salt. With such a heavy caliber of flavors, there’s no need for any added sugars in this tasty tea time snack. Plus, the lentils offer a great amount of fiber without an overload of carbohydrates.

Venture north and you’ll find Pav Bhaji. Pav Bhaji is a thick vegetable curry made of potatoes, tomatoes and varieties of seasonal vegetables. Though slightly higher in carbohydrates than some other dishes due to the potatoes, Pav Bhaji is still suitable in moderation for diabetics. The vegetables added in the curry offer a nice serving of fiber that will help properly metabolize the carbs from the potatoes. Pav Bhaji is usually served with a roll of bread on the side. Make sure to keep the carb content low by asking the vendor for no bread.

Japan

Japan is known for having some of the healthiest food in the world. Rice is a constant in most Japanese dishes and this may cause diabetics to shy away. But, there are Japanese street foods that are served without rice, low in carbohydrate and high in fiber. Yaki Imo, a simple Japanese roasted sweet potato, is a great option for diabetics. Sweet potatoes provide complex carbohydrates that supply essential energy and won’t cause sudden changes in blood sugar. Besides Yaki Imo, you can also find sukiyaki on the streets of some Japanese cities. Sukiyaki is a dish of beef and vegetables both cooked in one pot. When eaten without white rice, sukiyaki is a great low-carb option for diabetics.

Diabetes and Travel

Traveling as a diabetic doesn’t have to be an ordeal. By making sure you eat regularly, you can avoid dangerous drops in blood sugar levels. It’s also important to choose meals and snacks that provide enough fiber to help with carbohydrate metabolism. This will help you to avoid fluctuations in blood sugar levels.

Never forget to travel with your insulin. Following these and other directions from your healthcare provider will help you make a success of your vacation!

Planning on trying street foods? Up to 70 percent of travelers will contract travelers’ diarrhea. Stay healthy and keep bathroom visits to a minimum with a travelers’ diarrhea kit from Passport Health. Call or book online to schedule your appointment today.

Ese Agboh is a student nurse who wants to specialize in pediatric nursing and wound care. In her free time, she enjoys reading and writing articles related to medicine and the pathophysiology of communicable diseases. Ese currently lives and studies on the east coast of the United States.

As healthcare rapidly advances, so does technology. Separately, these two fields tackle the world’s problems every day. Together, these two fields can tackle the world’s most overlooked healthcare issues.

With everything else that is going on in the world, it is all too easy to delay research and funding for rare diseases. As major companies turn their focus to larger, more impactful concerns, there are a few small companies working on AI in healthcare. Companies like DeepMind and Healx have recently made advancements in the AI healthcare fields.

In December 2020 DeepMind released AlphaFold 2, a unique AI system that explains how proteins fold. With this information, healthcare researchers can accurately and quickly model proteins for future reference. Knowing the structure of proteins allows scientist to discover what medications work best against them. With this information, experts will have a wealth of information at their fingertips to help discover cures and treatments for rare disease.

The release of AlphaFold 2 is a major breakthrough in healthcare, and was hailed the solution to a 50-year-old problem. There are an estimated 7000 rare diseases, affecting 350 million people worldwide. The Drugs for Neglected Disease institute (DNDi) develops life-saving treatments for neglected diseases. This is where companies like Healx step in with their AI programs.

Healx created the Healnet platform, a comprehensive rare disease knowledge base. It allows providers to make accurate predictions when treating rare diseases. Predictions about treatments enable providers to make decisions quickly, which could be life-saving.

Advances in AI healthcare go beyond the treatment of rare disease. These advances in AI can help personalize healthcare for individual circumstances. Healthcare is very in depth and goes far below the surface. Genetic subtypes, both for individuals and diseases, can sometimes stump physicians. AI databases are loaded with more information than a human can retain. This gives AI the ability to quickly and efficiently diagnose a problem. That’s not to say that you will soon be seeing an artificial physician, AI’s role in healthcare is intended to be supportive.

Alone AI is not able to efficiently care for a patient, the system has to learn through trial and error, which can be dangerous for patients. That is why the role of physician will remain in human hands, while the algorithms (a set of problem-solving rules) will be left to AI.

“The superpower of these AI systems is that they can look at all of these large amounts of data and hopefully surface the right information or the right predictions at the right time,” said Finale Doshi-Velez, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

We don’t know how long it will take for AI to fully launch into healthcare, but it offers a promising future to patients with rare diseases. Merging AI with healthcare will be one of the most beneficial to happen to healthcare, and will undoubtedly alter the profession forever.

Passport Health offers a variety of vaccination and physical services to help you stay safe and healthy at home and abroad. Call or book online to schedule your appointment today.

Written for Passport Health by Brittany Evans. Brittany is a freelance writer and photographer in North Carolina. She has a passion for the outdoors, health information, and traveling. You can find her at her website.

Polio is a virus that shook the United States during the 1940’s and 1950’s. The virus spiked during the summer months, causing paralysis in some cases. During the epidemic, most children were kept indoors away from others out of fear that they would contract polio.

Some cases of polio didn’t show any signs or symptoms of infection, making it hard to know whether a person was infected. In most cases, the infected person was able to recover without any complications. In rare cases, polio could leave a person with paralysis or other nerve conditions.

As polio devastated the US, with 57, 000 cases at its peak in 1952, Jonas Salk (the inventor of the polio vaccine) was hesitant to push the vaccine. Salk wanted to make certain that the vaccine was both safe and effective. Testing a vaccine’s effectiveness is not cheap, so Salk had to experiment with new techniques to prove the vaccine worked.

Russell W. Brown and Jimmy Henderson, two scientists who worked at the Tuskegee Institute, decided to help Salk with the polio vaccine. The scientists decided to use HeLa cells, cancerous cells that were taken from Henrietta Lacks, to test the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Using the HeLa cells didn’t come without challenges of its own. The pair needed to create a HeLa cell factory to reproduce the cells in large quantities. Salk’s trial required an estimated 10,000 tubes a week of HeLa cells. Both Brown and Henderson were knowledgeable scientists, but they had never experimented like this before. Growing, storing, and transporting cells required knowledge that neither Brown nor Henderson had.

Fortunately, they were able to connect with William F. Scherer, a young postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota. Scherer did early work on the poliovirus using HeLa cells and had instructed students on this topic. Scherer was able to teach both Brown and Henderson what they needed to know to grow their factory. Shortly after they met with Scherer, the HeLa factory was producing cells.

The team hit another roadblock when they tried to ship the cells across the US. The HeLa cells were very temperamental, and a change in temperature could kill them quickly. Brown and Henderson got help from Maria Telkes, a chemist at New York University. Telkes was able to create a type of cooler that could transport the cells for up to 96 hours.

Once the cells were successfully transported, the testing could begin.

Once cell testing was done, over 420,000 children were inoculated, and 200,000 were given placebo injections, with an additional 1.2 million other children observed in the study. The study was a success and the polio vaccine was given across the nation. The work that Brown, Henderson, and the other hidden scientists did, made it possible for polio to be eradicated in the US.

Passport Health offers polio and other key vaccines to help keep you healthy at home and abroad. Call or book online to schedule your appointment today.

Written for Passport Health by Brittany Evans. Brittany is a freelance writer and photographer in North Carolina. She has a passion for the outdoors, health information, and traveling. You can find her at her website.

Diarrhea can put a damper on any kind of plan as soon as it hits you. You do not even have to be traveling to get it. We all get it at some point in our lives. While many feel it is a taboo topic to talk about, it is something that should be talked about. Have you ever wondered why diarrhea happens or how diarrhea works?

Diarrhea is made up of loose and watery bowels that happens at least three times a day. There are a variety of reasons that one may experience diarrhea. There are chronic conditions that can cause it to happen often for some. For others, it can be an acute, or sudden case that can come on with no warning.

Whether caused by a virus or chronic condition, diarrhea occurs when your digestive system moves too quickly. In this case, the intestines do not have enough time to absorb the fluids. It can also happen when the digestive system ends up producing extra fluid. The end result is diarrhea, where the stools become watery and loose.

Some common causes of diarrhea can include viral infections. For example, norovirus, hepatitis A, and rotavirus can all cause the condition. Rotavirus is the highest common cause of diarrhea in children worldwide. Different types of bacteria can also cause diarrhea. One common cause is “food poisoning,” as a result of food contamination. E. coli, listeria and salmonella are also common bacteria that can cause it, too. Often, bacteria from uncooked food or unsanitary water can cause diarrhea.

Those who are living with a chronic condition that causes diarrhea, are typically put on medication to manage it. Conditions like celiac, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis and food intolerances can cause it. Diet is also a factor in controlling diarrhea in chronic conditions.

With diarrhea, you lose fluids and salts from your body. You run the risk of dehydration if you are not replacing the fluids that you use. Sports drinks and fruit juices are good for re-hydration and get essential electrolytes and salts back into your body. If diarrhea lasts more than three days, seek medical attention.

Planning a trip? Up to 70 percent of travelers will contract diarrhea while abroad. Stay protected and get better faster with a travelers’ diarrhea kit from Passport Health. Call or book online to schedule your appointment today.

Jennifer Passmore is a stay-at-home mom, writer and beader. She loves creating art with her words and through her jewelry. She is also a passionate mental health advocate. You can find more writing at her website Positivity In Pain.