Disease
This rod shaped bacterium has the ability to produce high levels of urease. Urease hydrolyzes urea to ammonia (NH3) and thus makes the urine more alkaline. If left untreated, the increased alkalinity can lead to the formation of crystals of struvite, calcium carbonate, and/or apatite. The bacteria can be found throughout the stones, and these bacteria lurking in the kidney stones can reinitiate infection after antibiotic treatment. Once the stones develop, over time they may grow large enough to cause obstruction and renal failure. Proteus can also cause wound infections, septicemia, and pneumonias, mostly in hospitalized patients.
Read more about this topic: Proteus Mirabilis
Famous quotes containing the word disease:
“All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.”
—Lenny Bruce (1925–1966)
“It is said, proverbially, that happy is the doctor who is called in when the disease is on its way out.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“It is useless to check the vain dunce who has caught the mania of scribbling, whether prose or poetry, canzonets or criticisms,—let such a one go on till the disease exhausts itself. Opposition like water, thrown on burning oil, but increases the evil, because a person of weak judgment will seldom listen to reason, but become obstinate under reproof.”
—Sarah Josepha Buell Hale 1788–1879, U.S. novelist, poet and women’s magazine editor. American Ladies Magazine, pp. 36-40 (December 1828)