Typhoid fever is a common worldwide bacterial disease transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium
Salmonella typhi.
Researchers based at Yale University have provided
an explanation of how typhoid, a disease marked by delirium and stupor, still kills an estimated 200,000 people every year. In the U.S., it is
estimated that approximately 5,700 cases occur annually.
The potency of the disease is due to a powerful toxin possessed by
Salmonella typhi, the bacterium that causes typhoid fever.
The identification of the toxin has come from studies carried out in mice. The reason why the toxin has proved to be so hard to identify is because the typhoid toxin is created from the merger of two separate and powerful toxins. Once the mice showed a reaction, the toxin was identified through atomic analysis.
The report identifying the toxin has been
published in the journal Nature in a paper titled "Structure and function of the Salmonella Typhi chimaeric A2B5 typhoid toxin."
