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Tragedy continues to strike the Tampa Bay area as health officials confirm five fatalities resulting from an insidious flesh-eating bacterium that has been identified to frequent the region’s beaches. The State of Florida’s Health Department has shared that the microorganism in question, known as vibrio vulnificus, is naturally inclined to thrive in warm and brackish seawater, necessitating a saline environment for its survival. The bacterium tends to proliferate more aggressively during the warmer months. Health experts emphasize that infections stemming from vibrio vulnificus are rare. However, they caution that individuals with open wounds, cuts, or scrapes must exercise prudence by...

A Florida man nearly lost his leg when he contracted a nasty flesh-eating bacterial infection — after being bitten by a family member during a fight. Donnie Adams, of Tampa Bay, developed a small, painful bump after a relative sunk their teeth into his right thigh as he attempted to break up a tussle at a family gathering in February. Assuming it was just a harmless lesion, he took himself to get a tetanus shot and a course of antibiotics, the Tampa Bay Times reported. However, three days later, Adams could barely walk. The 52-year-old returned to Florida Northside Hospital...

LOS ANGELES (KTLA) – A flesh-eating “zombie drug” called xylazine has been saturating the streets of Los Angeles with severe, deadly effects when mixed with illicit opioids. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s officials launched a new program to track the troubling prevalence of the substance, which is a sedative typically used by veterinarians to anesthetize animals. Also known as “tranq” or “tranq dope” on the streets, xylazine has become increasingly present in the illicit drug supply. The drug can be cooked down into a powder form and mixed with illicit opioids such as heroin and fentanyl or pressed into counterfeit pills...

A young boy was rushed to the hospital after he contracted a flesh-eating bacteria at a Maryland beach. Brittany Carey shared two graphic images of her son's leg where the bacteria began eating away at his flesh in three spots. Carey said in a Facebook post on Saturday that her parents had taken her son out for a beach day off the coast of Ocean City on June 23. She wrote that her son had a great time swimming until June 24 when she 'started noticing little spots developing all over his body'. 'Tuesday morning there were open wounds developing...

If sharks and sunburns don’t scare you at the beach, perhaps this will: Most species of Vibrio are essentially harmless, but some are responsible for diseases like cholera, or can rarely cause flesh-eating skin infections, especially in people with weakened immune systems... But presuming it holds up, the study could help explain a well-supported pattern—beachgoers who swim in the ocean are more likely to get sick with stomach aches or ear infections soon after than those who stay on the sand. And though the bulk of the blame can be tossed on the germs (often from poop) that get into...

A rare sexually transmitted disease that causes flesh-eating ulcers on patients’ genitalia has popped up in England, the Lancashire Post reported. [Snip] Donovanosis, which is spread through sexual intercourse with an infected patient, or by coming into contact with a patient's infected ulcer, is typically seen in India, New Guinea, parts of the Caribbean, central Australia and southern Africa. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the painless disease causes progressive ulcerative lesions on the genitals or perineum, which are prone to heavy bleeding. Patients are at risk of extragenital infections that can occur in the pelvic...

There was a time when people weren't against Syrians seeking refuge in the United States. There is now a disease that has been linked back to the refugees, and it's making some of those supporters question their decision. Even the people who are still in Syria are spreading the diseases that have been thought to be dismissed in the western world. Polio, measles and a flesh-eating disease have plagued Syrians, and wherever they go, the diseases seem to follow. In 2013, the World Health Organization noted that there were 139 cases of measles and polio in Syria when only a...

A flesh-eating tropical disease is ravaging the war-torn Middle East, after Islamic State destruction created the ideal breeding conditions.

An outbreak of Leishmaniasis is spreading fast due to to pollution and poor hygiene conditions Islamic State fighters are falling ill in their droves to a deadly flesh-eating virus. Known as Leishmaniasis, the disease is spreading at a fast thanks to pollution and poor hygiene conditions and there have been more than 100,000 cases reported, the Sun has reported. It causes large open wounds which eat away at flesh, is fatal if not treated with a simple course of medicine.

A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest that can degrade and utilize the common plastic polyurethane (PUR). As part of the university’s Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory educational program, designed to engage undergraduate students in discovery-based research, the group searched for plants and cultured the micro-organisms within their tissue.

BALTIMORE — Waking from a fog of anesthesia, Sandy Wilson found she was a patient in one of the hospitals where she worked as a nurse. She remembered having a baby, and being told she had gotten an infection. But nothing could prepare her for what lurked beneath the sheets. Flesh-eating bacteria were eating her alive. "When I looked down at my belly, basically all the skin was gone and I could see my internal organs," she said. "I remember seeing my intestines. I thought, 'There's no way I can live like this ... This is a death sentence.'" ...

Nacogdoches man was infected by flesh-eating organisms while at Crystal Beach The 58-year-old Nacogdoches man who was infected by flesh-eating bacteria after swimming at Crystal Beach is improving, his wife said Friday, and doctors expect to be able to save his leg. "He's doing better, but still not communicating," Linda Gilpatrick said of her husband, Steve. Gilpatrick was infected with a bacterium called Vibrio vulnificus after swimming during a July 8 fishing trip in Galveston County. The infection quickly developed into necrotizing fasciitis, a potentially fatal tissue-destroying disease. Vibrio vulnificus, which is in the same family as the bacterium that...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Health officials confirmed Wednesday [8-17] that a Jacksonville woman died Aug. 3 after flesh-eating bacteria invaded her body. The Duval County Health Department suspects that Candace Scott contracted the bacteria in the St. Johns River, where she was jet skiing a few days before her death. Channel 4's Jim Piggott spoke to an official at the health department who offered some advice for those coming into contact with the water. "Make sure that they wear good footwear if they're standing in the water or fishing or wading around so they don't get puncture wounds on their feet,"...