(ETH) – A deadly pathogen called scarlet fever was once the leading cause of death for children across the western world and was nearly eradicated thanks to 20th-century medicine but new outbreaks of it have surfaced in the UK and North East Asia over recent years suggesting we’ve still got a long way to go.
The reason we are experiencing a resurgence of this deadly pathogen still remians a mystery. However, a new study has reportedly uncovered clues in the genome of one of the bacterial strains responsible, showing just how complex the family tree of infectious diseases can be.
According to the report from Science Alert, The species behind the illness is group A strep, or Streptococcus pyogenes; which is a ball-shaped microbe that can churn out toxic compounds called superantigens, that are capable of wreaking havoc inside the body. Especially in children. Results of this in the body can cause mild symptoms such as a bad rash and be as severe as causing a toxic shock that causes organs to fail.
With the invention of antibiotics, outbreaks could easily be managed before they got out of hand. By the 1940s, the disease was well on the way out but this looks to be changing. “After 2011, the global reach of the pandemic became evident with reports of a second outbreak in the UK,
beginning in 2014, and we’ve now discovered outbreak isolates here in Australia,” says the University of Queensland molecular biologist Stephan Brouwer. “This global re-emergence of scarlet fever has caused a more than five-fold increase in disease rate and more than 600,000 cases around the world.”
