Symptoms+&+Disease+Progression+-+Cholera

Cholera has an incubation period from a few hours to five until symptoms appear. Typically symptoms appear 2-3 days after the bacteria is introduced to your body. In 80% of cases can be successfully treated with oral rehydration salts. To test the cholera bacterium is present in a patients body a stool sample must be collected and tested, or a rectal swab must be examined. Once infected a patient will experience a highly liquid stool or diarrhea. A liquidy stool with the bacterium present can contaminate any untreated water.

Main symptoms: profuse diarrhea, vomiting of clear liquid, and dehydration. Other symptoms include: stomach ache, dry skin, dry mucus membranes, excessive thirst, glassy eyes, nausea, low urine output, sunken eyes, unusual sleepiness, and rapid pulse.

In severe cholera cases (5% of infected patients) people experience vomiting and leg cramps, in addition to diarrhea and as a result rapid loss of body fluids leads to dehydration and shock. Without treatment death can occur within hours.

The disease is rarely spread from person to person. Coastal cholera outbreaks are from zooplankton blooms-zoonotic. Cholera Patient

Pathogenesis - Cholera