Chlamydia trachomatis responsible for sexually transmitted disease among the affluent, and fly-transmitted eye disease among the impoverished
(writing in progress)
The following commonality seems to have been widely overlooked.
The most frequent sexually transmitted disease in our developed societies these days is chlamydia.
Surprisingly, this is the same species as the main infection spread by the eye fly/bush fly superspecies, Musca sorbens/vetustissima, by a completely different pathway, in poor (developing) societies, and affecting a completely different part of the body.
The eye fly and bush fly are irritating. However, they are generally not particularly hazardous in transmitting pathogens.
They do transmit Chlamydia, thus causing the eye disease trachoma. This is a major cause of blindness.
As it turns out, the species of chlamydia, namely C. trachoma, is no different from the one that causes sexually transmitted disease in societies where the bush fly would never cause trachoma, because the people are far too ‘civilised’ and hygienic.
What is odd about this observation is that
- the same bacterium is transmitted in such radically different ways, and in such radically different social environments, and
- this bacterium is one of the few transmitted by the eye fly and bush fly.
Can the eye infection be transferred and become a genital infection? Or is the bacterium a "subspecies" that has a distinct niche on the body?
The Wikipedia site for Chlamydia trachoma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlamydia_infection ) may perhaps shed some light on any question of ‘subspecies’.
My take on it is that it is the same bacterium in both the conjunctivitis and the inflammation of the sex organs.
I do not know, but I get the impression that the two illnesses are separate. I.e., different individuals and different populations have conjunctivitis vs sexually transmitted chlamydia. Does any reader know?
The main significance w.r.t. fly biology:
The fact that one of the few infections transmitted by the bush fly or eye fly is a chlamydial trachoma seems to support the idea that these flies are relatively harmless.
Where trachoma occurs, it is caused more by the condition of the people than by the nature of the fly, as it were.
What I mean by this is that the situations are usually poor and desperate, so that patients’ immune systems are weak. It does not take much to make them ill, and even these relatively harmless flies can cause problems in such situations.
And the bacterium transmitted is not one strongly associated with the flies, because the same form of bacterium causes quite different diseases in different socioeconomic situations, where no fly is involved, and healthy people in rich societies get chlamydia from recreational sex.
(writing in progress)
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