10 Most Disgusting

Diseases

in the World

Harlequin Ichthyosis

Quite possibly one of the most heartbreaking diseases out there, Harlequin-type ichthyosis only affects infants and is a genetic disorder

Cancrum Oris

(Noma) is a devastating infectious disease which destroys the soft and hard tissues of the oral and para-oral structures.

Guinea-worm disease is caused by the parasitic worm Dracunculus medinensis or "Guinea-worm". This worm is the largest of the tissue parasites affecting humans. People drink water containing fleas, which die in the stomach and release larvae. These larvae penetrate the stomach wall and settle into body tissues. There is no available treatment or vaccine. Instead, the worm is removed slowly by winding it around a small stick after it emerges. This may take weeks. Thankfully, the disease has gone down from 3.5 million cases in 1986 in Africa, to 148 in 2013.

Tree Man Syndrome

Symptoms include flat-to-raised, wart-like bumps and reddish-brown raised plaques on the trunk, hands, upper and lower extremities, and the face. Patientswith this condition are typically infected with multiple types of HPV.Jan 17, 2017

Elephantiasis

Elephantiasis is the uncontrollable swelling of the lymph nodes that could have been caused by mosquitoes.

Gingivitis

Remember whenever you got irritated when your dentist reminds you to brush and floss regularly? It’s because of this.

Leishmaniasis

Another disease caused by a sandfly bite.

Leprosy

Leprosy is a chronic infection caused by Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Historically speaking, lepers were considered to be social pariahs as the disease was highly contagious and untreatable back then.

Lewandowsky-Lutz Dysplasia

Commonly known as “tree man disease” Lewandowsky-Lutz Dysplasia is a genetic disease that makes the skin susceptible to the HPV virus.

Macrodactyly

Macrodactyly, or also known as local giantism, is when a limb or two grows at a higher rate than the rest of the body.

Myiasis

Myiasis occurs when a maggot infestation burrow themselves inside one’s flesh and eat their way through.

Necrotizing Fascitis

Necrotizing Fascitis is caused by flesh-eating bacteria and spreads through the body quickly, usually requiring amputation in order to save a life.

Porphyria

Porphyria occurs when the body has a deficiency of heme that distributes oxygen throughout the blood.

Congenital insensitivity to pain

Ever wish you didn't feel pain? Take it back right now! Pain is a life-saving physical response to danger, and when people are born with a rare genetic mutation that leaves them unable to feel pain, they often die early deaths as a result of treatable injuries that they simply fail to notice. It all starts in infancy, when babies born with pain insensitivity bite off the tips of their tongues, break their bones without making a fuss, and get corneal damage after neglecting to brush foreign objects out of their eyes.

Pica

Sufferers of pica have an undeniable urge to eat non-food, often as a result of stress, mineral deficiency or pregnancy. The disease has many sub-categories, some weirder and more dangerous than others, to describe people who eat chalk, feces, glass, mucus, paint, body parts, hair, urine, wood and more. Pictured above are 1,446 metal items, from nails to salt shaker tops, that were surgically removed from the stomach of a pica patient in Missouri. She died of blood loss during the surgery.

Maggot infestation

Of all the freaky medical conditions out there, one is most disgusting. A team of researchers at the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene & and Tropical Medicine conducted a survey in 2010 to discover what medical conditions humans are most disgusted by. They presented 20 images of things perceived as repulsive from festering wounds to discolored bodily fluids to more than 80,000 individuals from around the world, and had them rate the images from least to most disgusting. The image universally ranked as most disgusting is what you see above the mouth of a man who suffers from a Sarcophagid fly larvae infestation. This medical condition ranks as most repulsive, said lead researcher Valerie Curtis, because "disgust is designed by evolution to keep us away from parasites that may make us sick, so people pick up on, and are most disgusted by, visual representations of a parasite invasion.

Cotard delusion

Is there anything stranger than an otherwise-sane person wholeheartedly believing he or she is dead? Cotard delusion, otherwise known as walking corpse syndrome, is an extremely rare condition whereby people wake up one day and think they have died, that they no longer exist, or that their flesh is rotting off. It's all in their head, of course, but there's a physical cause nonetheless: The brain region involved in facial recognition has become disconnected from the regions involved in emotion. When the person looks in the mirror, they recognize themselves, but they don't have the usual emotional response. Their appearance has lost its association with their sense of self, and this cognitive dissonance results in the sense that they do not exist, or have died.

Echinococcosis

Also known as hydatid disease, this is another parasitic tapeworm infection, which an twist. When the Echinococcis granulosus worm infects a host, it creates an other-worldly cyst in the body. The cyst continues to expand until it is either removed, or overcomes the host. More disturbing is that the echinococcosis loves to make its home in the host brain. The image below shows the removal of a hydatid cyst from the abdomen. This movie depicts removal of a cyst from the brain and is a very graphic, real-life example of how large the cysts in the brain get, and how they are removed.

Ascariasis

The great white parasitic roundworm. Though not as common nor as long as her tapeworm counterpart, Ascariasis are far more cruel. Contracted from eating ascariasis fecal matter, the larvae hatch in your gut, they dig through your intestines, eat through your lungs, move into your respiratory tract, and get reswallowed into your gut where they grow very large and very numerous. The worms can grow up to 1 foot in length, measuring inches in circumference, and there may be hundreds in one intestine. The image below is an intestine that has been opened up after surgery.

Myiasis

Maggots eating your flesh…and you don’t even know it! How do flies get in your body to lay eggs in the first place? How do people not realize there are hundreds of maggots eating their dying skin? How does it all happen? I don’t know, but the simple thought of the whole cycle makes me feel queasy. One interesting fact is that the use of maggot therapy is on the rise. Some physicians are beginning to adopt a century old practice of cleaning necrotic wounds with maggots…interesting. If you are really brave, check out the video published in BMC Surgery of a surgeon removing multiple maggots from a woman chest.

Search This Blog

All In One