• Question: what is bacteria makes you the sickest and what one is the most common

    Asked by 969mcrk46 to Ananthi on 5 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Ananthi Ramachandran

      Ananthi Ramachandran answered on 5 Nov 2017:

      This is a great question! First of all common bacteria! There are lots of common bacteria. In fact our skin is covered in a layer of bacteria. But this is what’s called our “normal flora”. This means it’s part of us and won’t cause us any harm one of these is called Staphylococcus epidermidis. Most bacteria have very long names! In the same way there is also normal flora in our gut (our belly). As for the bacteria that makes you sickest that depends on what you think is the worst disease in the world? 2 called Clostridium tetani and Clostridium botulinum are bacteria that produce very strong toxins and when that gets into your body it can make you very sick. Bacteria that get into your bloodstream can make you very sick indeed!

Comments

  • Photo: Christopher

    Christopher commented on :

    Nice question! The truth is that most bacteria are normal even the dangerous ones! They’re everywhere and pretty much all the time they are around you and on you they don’t cause you any harm, its only when theses bacteria manage to somehow get into the places that they don’t normally belong where they begin to cause harm! For example you may have heard of MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus)? That’s the one that’s always on the news about being in “dirty” hospitals, but actually 80% of the people around you right now have it on their skin and it just lives there happily not doing much. However if you were to cut yourself very badly then there’s a chance that it can get into you blood where it doesn’t belong and make you sick!

    So if you take a minute to think about a few diseases and research the bacteria that causes it, you might find that most bacteria are harmless until they venture into unknown territory!

  • Photo: Ashley

    Ashley commented on :

    99% of bacteria are good bacteria, meaning they help us make cheese and yoghurt, whilst others help us digest food. The most dangerous bacteria are pathogens, these range from bacteria like Bacillus anthracis – the cause of anthrax, Mycobacterium tuberculosis – the cause of TB and Yersinia pestis – the cause of the plague/black death. These bacteria make us reallly reallllly sick, but all these bacteria are luckily quite rare to find!

  • Photo: Mercury-Hg

    Mercury-Hg commented on :

    Thanks for the help! I’ll look into this topic some more to see if I can find out information about it.