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Bacterial Spores are a bacterial defensive strategy to survive in harsh environments. Several types of bacteria are capable of using this mechanism. The spores themselves do not cause the disease, they must be first be reactivated to functional bacteria in the proper environment. Bascillis anthasis or more commonly know as anthrax is the most well know due to the potential terrorist threat. The more prevalent bacteria which causes disease is clostridium difficile which reactivates in the colon causing a diarrhea illness usually after someone takes antibiotics which kill off the normal colon bacteria. Up to 5-10% of people carry this in their colon, but this becomes much higher amongst hospitalized patients. There are other spore forming bacteria, but these are not commonly associated with disease.

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14y ago

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