Mechanism of Illness
Humans contract the disease after a bite by an infected tick of the species Amblyomma americanum.
Those with an underlying immunodeficiency (such as HIV) appear to be at greater risk of contracting the disease. Compared to HME, ewingii ehrlichiosis has a decreased incidence of complications.
Like Anaplasma phagocytophilum, the causative agent of human granulocytic ehrlichiosis, Ehrlichia ewingii infects neutrophils. Infection with E. ewingii may delay neutrophil apoptosis.
Read more about this topic: Ehrlichiosis Ewingii Infection
Famous quotes containing the words mechanism of, mechanism and/or illness:
“A mechanism of some kind stands between us and almost every act of our lives.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 2 (1962)
“When one of us dies of cancer, loses her mind, or commits suicide, we must not blame her for her inability to survive an ongoing political mechanism bent on the destruction of that human being. Sanity remains defined simply by the ability to cope with insane conditions.”
—Ana Castillo (b. 1953)
“The fact that illness is associated with the poor—who are, from the perspective of the privileged, aliens in one’s midst—reinforces the association of illness with the foreign: with an exotic, often primitive place.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)