Dysentery (formerly known as flux or the bloody flux) is an infection of the digestive system that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and blood in the feces. Dysentery is typically the result of unsanitary water containing micro-organisms which damage the intestinal lining. There are two major types of dysentery due to micro-organisms: amoebic dysentery, and bacillary dysentery mainly due to one of three bacteria. Dysentery can also be caused by certain medications; for example, some steroids can impact bowel movements.^[1] In medicine, diarrhea, also spelled diarrhoea (see spelling differences), refers to frequent loose or liquid bowel movements. ... Horse feces Feces, faeces, or fæces (see spelling differences) is a waste product from an animals digestive tract expelled through the anus (or cloaca) during defecation. ... A microorganism or microbe is an organism that is so small that it is microscopic (invisible to the naked eye). ... The intestine is the portion of the alimentary canal extending from the stomach to the anus and, in humans and other mammals, consists of two segments, the small intestine and the large intestine. ...

Amoebic dysentery

Main article: Amoebiasis

Amoebic dysentery (or amebic dysentery) is caused by the amoeba Entamoeba histolytica. For other uses, see Amoeba (disambiguation). ... For the infection and disease caused by this parasite, refer to Amoebiasis. ...

Amoebic dysentery is transmitted through contaminated food and water. Amoebae spread by forming infective cysts which can be found in stools and spread if whoever touches them does not sanitize their hands. There are also free amoebae, or trophozoites, that do not form cysts.

Amoebic dysentery is well known as a "traveler's dysentery" because of its prevalence in developing nations, or "Montezuma's Revenge" although it is occasionally seen in industrialized countries. Liver infection, and subsequent amoebic abscesses can occur. Bleeding in stools may occur. Montezumas Revenge (var. ... The liver is the largest internal organ in the human body, and is an organ present in vertebrates and some other animals. ...

Bacillary dysentery

Bacillary dysentery is mostly commonly associated with three bacterial groups:

• Shigellosis is caused by one of several types of Shigella bacteria.
• Campylobacteriosis caused by any of the dozen species of Campylobacter that cause human disease
• Salmonellosis caused by Salmonella enterica (serovar Typhimurium).

Species S. boydii S. dysenteriae S. flexneri S. sonnei This article is about the bacteria. ... Phyla/Divisions Actinobacteria Aquificae Bacteroidetes/Chlorobi Chlamydiae/Verrucomicrobia Chloroflexi Chrysiogenetes Cyanobacteria Deferribacteres Deinococcus-Thermus Dictyoglomi Fibrobacteres/Acidobacteria Firmicutes Fusobacteria Gemmatimonadetes Nitrospirae Omnibacteria Planctomycetes Proteobacteria Spirochaetes Thermodesulfobacteria Thermomicrobia Thermotogae Bacteria (singular, bacterium) are a major group of living organisms. ... Campylobacteriosis is among the most common bacterial infections of humans. ... Species C. fetus C. jejuni Campylobacter is a genus of Gram-negative bacteria. ... Salmonellosis is an infection with Salmonella bacteria. ... Binomial name (ex Kauffmann & Edwards 1952) Le Minor & Popoff 1987 Salmonella enterica is a rod shaped, flagellated, Gram-negative bacterium, and a member of the genus Salmonella. ...

Symptoms and complications

Symptoms include frequent passage of feces/stool, loose motion and in some cases associated vomiting. Variations depending on parasites can be frequent urge with high or low volume of stool, with or without some associated mucus and even blood.

Once recovery starts, early refeeding is advocated avoiding foods containing lactose due to temporary [can persist for years] lactose intolerance.^[2][3]

Treatment

The first and main task in managing any episode of dysentery is to maintain fluid intake using oral rehydration therapy. If this can not be adequately maintained, either through nausea and vomiting or the profuseness of the diarrhoea, then hospital admission may be required for intravenous fluid replacement. Ideally no antimicrobial therapy is started until microbiological microscopy and culture studies have established the specific infection involved. Where laboratory services are lacking, it may be required to initiate a combination of drugs including an amoebicidal drug to kill the parasite and an antibiotic to treat any associated bacterial infection. Oral Rehydration Therapy, or ORT, is a simple, cheap, and effective treatment for diarrhea caused by, e. ... An intravenous drip in a hospital Intravenous therapy or IV therapy is the administration of liquid substances directly into a vein. ... A parasite is an organism that spends a significant portion of its life in or on the living tissue of a host organism and which causes harm to the host without immediately killing it. ... Staphylococcus aureus - Antibiotics test plate. ... An infection is the detrimental colonization of a host organism by a foreign species. ...

Amoebic dysentery can be treated with metronidazole. Mild cases of bacillary dysentery are often self-limiting and do not require antibiotics,^[4] which are reserved for more severe or persisting cases; campylobacter, shigella and salmonella respond to ciprofloxacin or macrolide antibiotics.^[4] Metronidazole (INN) (pronounced ) is a nitroimidazole anti-infective drug used mainly in the treatment of infections caused by susceptible organisms, particularly anaerobic bacteria and protozoa. ... Ciprofloxacin is the generic international name for the synthetic antibiotic manufactured and sold by Bayer Pharmaceutical under the brand names Cipro, Ciproxin and Ciprobay (and other brand names in other markets, e. ... The macrolides are a group of drugs (typically antibiotics) whose activity stems from the presence of a macrolide ring, a large lactone ring to which one or more deoxy sugars, usually cladinose and desosamine, are attached. ...

Miscellaneous references

• The band blink-182 has a song called "Dysentery Gary" in which diarrhea is mentioned.
• Elie Wiesel, a renowned Holocaust survivor, described in his book Night his father suffering from dysentery while imprisoned in Buchenwald, a concentration camp of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.
• O. Uplavici was the fictional author of the article About dysentery whose name persisted in science literature for fifty years.
• Additionally, dying of dysentery has become a pop culture reference to the 1980s computer game, The Oregon Trail. The disease was one of several afflictions the player could die from, prompting the phrase, "You have died of dysentery."
• Lars Eighner writes about experiencing dysentery at least once a month during the time he lived as a homeless man dumpster diving.
• John McCain suffered from dysentery while a POW.
• In the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall, Allen's character jokes that two leading intellectual magazines, Dissent and Commentary, had merged to form Dysentery. An oblique reference to intellectual pretense.
• In the movie Pulp Fiction, Captain Koons played by Christopher Walken informs a young Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) that his father had died from dysentery after concealing a wrist watch inside of his rectum for five years.
• Harrison Ford apparently suffered from the condition while filming Raiders of the Lost Ark in Tunisia; this partially resulted in his suggesting that rather than have an elaborate fight with a sword-wielding assassin, Indiana Jones should just shoot him - a now famous gag in the movie.
• In the video game Gears of War for the Xbox 360, the character Baird says "We are going to get Dysentery from this shit!" referring to the food of the stranded people.
• In the film Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin Williams jokes that it would be terrible if his ex-wife came down with amoebic dysentery, leading to a gross and vague description of the illness by his son.
• In the book On the Road, the main character Sal Paradise suffers from dysentery at the end of his time in Mexico.
• Dysentery is a frequently-mentioned malady in the TV series M*A*S*H.
• The Tom Lehrer song "In Old Mexico" (on the album An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer) has the lines "We ate, we drank, and we were merry/And we got typhoid and dysentery."
• The English Privateer Sir Francis Drake died from dysentery in 1596.
• John of England died from dysentery in 1216.
• A few years ago, Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd caused an outbreak of dysentery at their Haywards Heath branch, this caused one death and many other people suffered from it. Sainsbury's are still paying out compensation that has gone into millions of pounds. It was thought but wasn't verified that this was brought to the branch by a colleague that worked on the salad counter, who had poor hygeine standards.

Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ... Singles from Enema of the State Released: November 9, 1999 Released: January 18, 2000 Released: August 29, 2000 Enema of the State, Blink-182s third, and most successful, studio album, was released June 1, 1999, on MCA Records and features the hits Whats My Age Again?, Adams... Elie Wiesel (born Eliezer Wiesel on September 30, 1928)[1] is a writer, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. ... Night is a work by Elie Wiesel based on his experience, as a young Orthodox Jew, of being sent with his family to the German death camp at Auschwitz, and later to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. ... For other uses, see Holocaust (disambiguation) and Shoah (disambiguation). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Popular culture, or pop culture, is the vernacular (peoples) culture that prevails in a modern society. ... The Oregon Trail is an educational computer game developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger in 1971 and produced by MECC in 1974. ... Lars Eighner is the author of Travels with Lizbeth, a memoir of homelessness in the American Southwest during the late 1980s; the included essay On Dumpster Diving, which is widely anthologized both at full length or in abridged form under the title My Daily Dives in the Dumpster; Pawn to... Dumpster diving is the practice of rummaging through trash, whether commercial or residential, to find items of use that have been discarded. ... McCain redirects here. ... Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is a three-time Academy Award-winning American film director, writer, actor, jazz musician, comedian and playwright. ... Annie Hall is a 1977 romantic comedy film directed by Woody Allen from a script he co-wrote with Marshall Brickman. ... Dissent Magazine is a left-wing magazine that was started in 1954 by Irving Howe and Lewis Coser. ... Commentary Magazine is a journal published by the American Jewish Committee, since 1945. ... Pulp Fiction is a 1994 film by director Quentin Tarantino, who cowrote the film with Roger Avary. ... Christopher Walken (born March 31, 1943) is an Academy Award-winning American film and theatre actor. ... Walter Bruce Willis (born March 19, 1955) is an award - winning German-born American actor and singer. ... For the silent film actor, see Harrison Ford (silent film actor). ... This article is about the film. ... This article is about the fictional character. ... Gears of War is a tactical third-person shooter video game developed by Epic Games (the creators of the Unreal series) using Unreal Engine 3. ... It has been suggested that Xbox 360 Elite be merged into this article or section. ... Mrs. ... For other persons named Robin Williams, see Robin Williams (disambiguation). ... This article is about the novel On the Road. ... Sal Paradise is the narrator and the protagonist in Jack Kerouacs novel On the Road. ... M*A*S*H title screen from the television series M*A*S*H was a media franchise active, in various forms, from 1968 to 1986. ... Thomas Andrew Tom Lehrer (born April 9, 1928) is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. ... An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer is an album recorded by Tom Lehrer, the well-known satirist and Harvard lecturer. ... This article is about the Elizabethan naval commander. ... This article is about the King of England. ...

See also

• Gastroenteritis

See also Bacterial gastroenteritis and Diarrhea Gastroenteritis is a general term referring to inflammation or infection of the gastrointestinal tract, primarily the stomach and intestines. ...

References