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Clostridium botulinum and Clostridium tetani


Today, I'm talking C. botulinum and C. tetani, two members of the massive Clostridium gang. You've probably heard of these before - botulism, botulinum, or botulinum toxin, and tetanus, which is also known as lockjaw.

Let's start with C. botulinum. According to Wikipedia, it produces the most dangerous toxin known to mankind, synthetic or natural. It causes foodborne botulism as well as wound botulism, infecting either through the digestive tract or an open wound. Botulinum toxin is quite dangerous, the lethal dose being 1.3–2.1 nanograms/kilogram of body mass in humans depending on which kind of toxin (there are a few produced by the group of bacteria that cause botulism, more info here) and how they enter the body. It's a neurotoxin so it's Quite Dangerous and has typical neurotoxin effects like death, cardiac arrest, paralysis, etc. But you see, for some reason, people like to use dangerous compounds to look pretty. See radium and arsenic for more details.

Anyway, eventually doctors decide to stick dangerous neurotoxins into people's systems, often the face. Some of these have actual medical purposes and some are called Botox. The medical reasons often include spasming disorders because the neurotoxin paralyses nerves, which can help with certain illnesses. Botox works in the same way - by paralysing facial nerves, it can reduce wrinkles.

That is just a brief history, but you can find more on C. botulinum here 

Onto C. tetani! Now, tetanus is pretty cool. It can be found in the soil pretty frequently but is often benign...unless you've got a deep wound. When you have the combination of tissue death and not a lot of surface air, tetanus spores have an opportunity to germinate and spread. Unfortunately for whatever or whoever is infected, it also releases tetanospasmin and tetanolysin (the word lyse means to break open, so we can infer the meaning of tetanolysin). Anyhow, tetanospasmin or tetanus toxin is also extremely potent (lethal dose less than 2.5 ng/kg of body weight) and it causes intense muscle spasms. Tetanus is interesting because it also causes lockjaw, which implies only the jaw is paralysed, but that's just the most common place. With tetanus, you've got paralysis and spasms, as well as circulatory system problems so blood pressure and pulse are unusual, and sometimes spasms are so bad they can cause fractured bones. Not fun. Moral of the story: get your tetanus vaccine.

Tetanus the disease here

C. tetani here

Image credits: Eye of Science, found on Fine Art America

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