Problem
I. Your tubes got mixed up in the lab! You will have to grow up the four tubes and use microbiological tests to figure out what is what. Suggest a strategy (series of tests on cultures or smears) to distinguish among respiratory pathogens Corynebacterium, Mycobacterium, S. pneumococcus and S. pyogenes. (Give a first step, and how you will interpret the results. Then a next step, etc.)
II. A friend has a wart on her hand and has just heard that warts are caused by HPV. She can't understand: she had the HPV vaccine! Why did it not protect her? Does it not work?
III. She is worried now that she might get cervical cancer from the wart. Explain why this is not so, using your knowledge of anatomy and how a virus traffics in the body.
IV. A CBC Diff is a useful way to evaluate whether a patient has a viral or a bacterial infection. List a difference in immune response that would generally indicate a virus and one that would generally indicate a bacterium and why.
V. Sometimes the results are misleading, though! Which of these bacteria might produce a clinical immune profile that looks more like a viral response-systemic E. coli infection or Shigella spp.? Why?