the link between SCURVY & EBOLA Ebola - Instant Scurvy? Ebola is probably the best known of a class of viruses known as hemorrhagic fever viruses. The Cecil Textbook of Medicine notes that these diseases are characterized by capillary fragility, which translates to easy bleeding, that can frequently lead to severe shock and death. These diseases also tend to consume and/or destroy the platelets, which play an integral role in blood clotting. The clinical presentation of these viral diseases is similar to scurvy, which is also characterized by capillary fragility and a tendency to bleed easily. Characteristic skin lesions develop, which are actually multiple tiny areas of bleeding into the skin that surround the hair follicles. some cases even include bleeding into already healed scars. In the classic form of scurvy, which evolves very slowly from the gradual depletion of vitamin C body stores, the immune system will be sufficiently compromised for infection to claim the patient’s life before the extensive hemorrhage that occurs after all vitamin C stores have been completely exhausted. Ebola virus and the other viral hemorrhagic fevers are much more likely to cause hemorrhaging before any other fatal infection has a chance to become established. This is because the virus so rapidly and totally metabolizes and consumes all available vitamin C in the bodies of the victims that an advanced stage of scurvy is literally produced after only a few days of the disease. The scurvy is so complete that the blood vessels generally cannot keep from hemorrhaging long enough to allow an infective complication to develop. In addition, the viral hemorrhagic fevers typically only take hold and reach epidemic proportions in those populations that would already be expected to have low body stores of vitamin C, such as are found in many of the severely malnourished Africans. In such individuals, an infecting hemorrhagic virus will often wipe out any remaining vitamin C stores before the immune systems can get the upper hand and initiate recovery. When the vitamin C stores are rapidly depleted by large infecting doses of an aggressive virus, the immune system gets similarly depleted and compromised.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 02:19:53 +0000
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