Bacterial diseases.

Bacteria are different from viruses. After all, they are full-fledged living organisms capable of providing themselves and reproducing themselves, of course, with sufficient food. Some of their species, getting into the human body, find suitable conditions for their life and begin to actively multiply, and, as a result, there are bacterial diseases.

Until the beginning of the last century, the tactics of combating pathogenic bacteria did not differ from the fight against viruses and was to help the body to defeat the disease on its own. Since then, the possibilities of medicine have increased significantly, both in the treatment and in the diagnosis of such pathologies as bacterial diseases. Scientists have created a number of groups of drugs that can kill microbes without harming the human body, for example, sulfonamides ("Etazol", "Penicillin", "Biseptol") and antibiotics ("Tetracycline", "Penicillin", "Gentamicin").

But microorganisms also did not completely give up, began to mutate, gradually acquiring resistance to these drugs, forcing people to invent more and more new drugs. In addition to constantly increasing resistance to drugs, bacteria are presented with one more unpleasant surprise: an ever-increasing number of microorganisms that are considered opportunistic and previously practically did not cause pathology, and nowadays they constantly cause people suffering. Bacteria are distinguished by a very large species diversity, and the bacterial diseases caused by them are very diverse. These microorganisms differ from each other not only in size, but also in structure, and in reproduction, and in nutrition. There are round cocci (meningo-, staphylo-, strepto- and so on), elongated - various sticks (pertussis, intestinal, dysentery), as well as irregular shape and equipped with all sorts of flagella, outgrowths and the like.

Bacterial diseases, unlike viral, do not have such pronounced tropism to individual human organs. Nevertheless, some "preferences" for individual microbes exist, for example, in meningococcus - the meninges, and in whooping cough - the epithelium of the respiratory tract and vice versa certain diseases, for example bacterial bronchitis, can be caused by various pathogens (hemolytic streptococcus, pneumococcus, Staphylococcus aureus and so on). But staphylococci nest anywhere and can cause a variety of diseases.

But the bacterium itself does not bring practically no harm to the human body. And the products of their vital activity are harmful - toxins. And they are different for each bacterium, and the symptoms that accompany bacterial diseases are determined precisely by their effect on the body. On these poisonous substances, however, as on the shell of the pathogenic cell and its various outgrowths, whether cilia, flagella or anything like that, the human immune system produces specific antibodies designed to protect its body from harmful effects. In addition to these protective substances in the fight against pathogens, phagocytes are also involved - special eater cells.

The most toxins are released during the death of bacterial cells and its subsequent destruction. And they are destroyed all the time, and because of the short duration of their lives, and because they are struggling with both immunity and the same antibiotics. These substances have the name - endotoxins, that is, are inside, there are also exotoxins that the microbe constantly releases into the environment during its life activity. By the way, exotoxins are the most powerful poisons from all those that are known to mankind.