Mucosal Microbes Mitigate Maladies

Microbes, molecules, maladies and man.

Monsoon maladies.

The advent of monsoon in India provides a welcome relief from the dry hot summer and brings waves of life to parched landscapes across the country, but the cooling showers also bring along a lot of diseases. Infectious diseases like Dengue fever, Chikungunya, Hantaviruses, Nipah virus, Chandipura virus, Malaria and the novel H1N1 influenza virus had emerged or re-emerged as major public health ...

Minor Maladies

Misinterpreter of Maladies !

Sir, Jhumpa Lahiri is a freelance journalist whose collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year (2000). One of her stories, The Treatment of Bibi Haldar, presents a 29 year old woman who suffers from episodes of convulsions. The clinical description suggests a diagnosis of epilepsy for several reasons. The convulsions appeared to hav...

Lice, Humans, and Microbes

Lice are small, wingless, minor ectoparasites of mammals and birds. More than 540  blood-sucking lice (Phthiraptera: Anoplura) have been described with each host having its own type of louse, suggesting the cospeciation of the lice species with their host. Among these, two lice species from two different genera infest humans: Pediculus humanus and Phthirus pubis (pubic “crab” l...