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Query: UMLS:C0038187 (starvation)
 24,951 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Sixty-eight marine mammals stranded on the Oregon beaches were examined at necropsy. Gunshot was the primary cause of death in 30% of the pinnipeds examined. Bacterial infections (27%) and parasitism (27%) were also of major importance in the death and debilitation of Oregon marine mammals. Traumatic death or debilitation other than gunshot was observed in 11 animals (16%). Predation, starvation due to neonatal abandonment, viral encephalitis (presumptive diagnosis), dystocia and neoplasia were diagnosed as primary or contributory causes of stranding.
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PMID:Causes of death in marine mammals stranded along the Oregon coast. 58 22

Projections from computer models predict that global warming will expand the incidence and distribution of many serious medical disorders. Global warming, aside from indirectly causing death by drowning or starvation, promotes by various means the emergence, resurgence, and spread of infectious diseases. This article addresses the health effects of global warming and disrupted climate patterns in detail. Among the greatest health concerns are diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, such as malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, and several kinds of encephalitis. Such disorders are projected to become increasingly prevalent because their insect carriers are very sensitive to meteorological conditions. In addition, floods and droughts resulting from global warming can each help trigger outbreaks by creating breeding grounds for insects whose desiccated eggs remain viable and hatch in still water. Other effects of global warming on health include the growth of opportunist populations and the increase of the incidence of waterborne diseases because of lack of clean water. In view of this, several steps are cited in order to facilitate the successful management of the dangers of global warming.
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PMID:Is global warming harmful to health? 1091 84

In many parasite-vector systems, alterations of the behaviour of the blood-sucking arthropods result in an increase of the transmission rate, but the underlying mechanisms are elucidated in only some systems. The more sluggish movements of the Trypanosoma rangeli-infected triatomine Rhodnius prolixus might increase the rate of predation by insectivorous mammals but also the transmission rate between the triatomines via cannibalism. Alterations of the feeding behaviour by which the number of attacks on hosts by blood-sucking arthropods can be increased seem to derive from two possible mechanisms. A competition for metabolites in the ingested blood induces an earlier starvation effect than in non-infected specimens and thus a new attempt by the insect to ingest blood. This may be relevant in T. cruzi-infected triatomines. Perhaps this is also the reason for the increased activity of ticks infected with the tick-borne encephalitis virus, resulting in a higher infection rate of ticks collected on humans than from the vegetation. The second, better elucidated mechanism is interference with the ingestion process, which causes a higher number of probings and low ingestion rates and is connected with disturbances of the digestive tract. Cells of the salivary glands are destroyed by the penetration of the parasites in Plasmodium-infected mosquitoes, T. rangeli-infected Rhodnius, and tsetse flies infected with salivarian Trypanosoma species. Some of the latter species attach to mechanoreceptive sensilla, which act as fluid flow meters and/or reduce the diameter of the foregut by a heavy colonization. This colonization effect is even more evident in several Leishmania-sandfly systems and in Yersinia pestis infection of the rat flea.
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PMID:Parasitogenic alterations of vector behaviour. 1653 7

Autophagy is an evolutionally conserved protein degradation pathway in eukaryotes. It plays essential roles during starvation, cellular differentiation, cell death, and aging by eliminating unwanted or unnecessary organelles and recycling the components for reuse. ATG8, a member of a novel ubiquitin-like protein family, is an essential component of the autophagic machinery. The present study identified and characterized autophagy protein 8 in Acanthamoeba castellanii an amphizoic amoeba causing granulomatous amoebic encephalitis and amoebic keratitis in humans. Real-time polymerase chain reaction demonstrated that the A. castellanii Atg8 (AcAtg8) gene encoding a 118 amino acid protein was highly expressed during encystation. Fluorescence microscopic analysis following transient transfection of enhanced green fluorescent protein-AcAtg8 revealed small or large vacuolar fluorescent structures in an encysting amoeba. The Atg8 fluorescent structures on the membrane were identified as autophagosomes by co-localization analysis with LysoTracker. Chemically synthesized small interfering RNA against AcAtg8 reduced the encystation efficiency and inhibited autophagosome formation in Acanthamoeba.
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PMID:Autophagy protein 8 mediating autophagosome in encysting Acanthamoeba. 1956 Apr 92

C57BL/6 (B6) mice are genetically highly susceptible to chronic type II Toxoplasma gondii infections that invariably cause lethal toxoplasmic encephalitis. We examined the ability of an attenuated type I vaccine strain to elicit long-term immunity to lethal acute or chronic type II infections in susceptible B6 mice. Mice immunized with the type I cps1-1 vaccine strain were not susceptible to a lethal (100-cyst) challenge with the type II strain ME49. Immunized mice challenged with 10 ME49 cysts exhibited significant reductions in brain cyst and parasite burdens compared to naive mice, regardless of the route of challenge infection. Remarkably, cps1-1 strain-immunized B6 mice chronically infected with ME49 survived for at least 12 months without succumbing to the chronic infection. Potent immunity to type II challenge infections persisted for at least 10 months after vaccination. While the cps1-1 strain-elicited immunity did not prevent the establishment of a chronic infection or clear established brain cysts, cps1-1 strain-elicited CD8(+) immune T cells significantly inhibited recrudescence of brain cysts during chronic ME49 infection. In addition, we show that uracil starvation of the cps1-1 strain induces early markers of bradyzoite differentiation. Collectively, these results suggest that more effective immune control of chronic type II infection in the genetically susceptible B6 background is established by vaccination with the nonreplicating type I uracil auxotroph cps1-1 strain.
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PMID:Long-term immunity to lethal acute or chronic type II Toxoplasma gondii infection is effectively induced in genetically susceptible C57BL/6 mice by immunization with an attenuated type I vaccine strain. 1979 73

Bornaviruses cause neurologic diseases in several species of birds, especially parrots, waterfowl and finches. The characteristic lesions observed in these birds include encephalitis and gross dilatation of the anterior stomach - the proventriculus. The disease is thus known as proventricular dilatation disease (PDD). PDD is characterized by extreme proventricular dilatation, blockage of the passage of digesta and consequent death by starvation. There are few clinical resemblances between this and the bornaviral encephalitides observed in mammals. Nevertheless, there are common virus-induced pathogenic pathways shared across this disease spectrum that are explored in this review. Additionally, a review of the literature relating to gastroparesis in humans and the control of gastric mobility in mammals and birds points to several plausible mechanisms by which bornaviral infection may result in extreme proventricular dilatation.
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PMID:The pathogenesis of proventricular dilatation disease. 2815 4