Is diarrhoea just collateral damage to the host or has it got an evolutionary advantage to it? I'm not asking w.r.t a specific species because many microbes share a similar structure of the HLT of ETEC. Does it mean that the symptom gives an evolutionary advantage to them?
Hi Vasishta, I am not sure about the evolutionary advantage, but it facilitates bacterial transmission. So they can move from host to host easily, otherwise our immune response would kill them all!
Hi
definitely right that diarrhea is messy and it means the
bacteria is more likely to spread.
Invading pathogens must compete with the native microbiota (for nutrients, physical space/niche) and also with our immune system.
and diarrhea does drastically changes the nutrients available
Kim and Ravinder (2010) Published PDF attached dealing with cellular and molecular and Mechanism of infectious diarrhea . I hope help you
There is a theory that diarrhoea facilitates transmission but if one considers Salmonella it tends to evolve away from diarrhoeal disease in the case of Typhoid, Fowl Typhoid and emerging variants of S. Typhimurium. One could equally argue that it is a host response to clear a pathogen. Either theory has some validity, but given the number of enterotoxins that have evolved separately there is some credence to it being an advantage
Just like Kiran Jayan, I am not sure about the evolutionary advantage and I agree that this could be a symptom on the part of the host but a mechanism that is triggered by the parasite to aid it in dispersal..to find other hosts
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