|
Interview with Pseudomonas aeruginosa:
Q: What does your name mean?
A: Pseudo means "false" in Greek, monas means "one unit" in Greek, and aeruginosa means "copper
rust" in Latin.
Q: Where is your favorite place to hang out?
A: I like the outside a lot and can infect animals and plants in nature-where I generally live in the soil. But, I also
appear in hospital settings in damp areas-I can get into the hospital from the outside on shoes or other inanimate objects
that come into the hospital or I can get there from patients who are already infected with me. I can also contaminate swimming
pools, hot tubs, and other damp areas-so be careful!
Q: What kind of people do you normally infect?
A: Generally just immunocompromised people-so if you're healthy and eat right you shouldn't worry about catching me!
Also if you get a burn or some other kind of wounds just make sure you clean out the dead cells, etc. to avoid becoming infected
with me and other pathogenic bacterium.
Q: What's you favorite kind of patient?
A: I like infecting burn patients if their wounds aren't cleaned properly and I'm also often found in the lungs of cystic
fibrosis patients where I can create a biofilm and be very hard to get rid of.
Q: What kind of symptoms do you create once you infect someone?
A: I can create septic shock-(not toxic shock where toxins circulate in the blood stream but where pathogens circulate
in the blood stream)-and I do some of the same things as Gangrene-so in general if your skin is infected (usually in burn
victims) I can infect the wound turning it colors like green and decaying the tissue or I can get into the blood and cause
severe swelling and disfigurement of certain part of your body-or in the case of cystic fibrosis patients I settle in the
lungs creating a biofilm and causing more coughing and complications with breathing.
|
