LAUSR

Cholera is a disease in which the bacterium Vibrio cholerae colonizes the small intestine and produces a toxin which leads to massive secretion of water and salts. This huge amount of fluid from the intestinal cells is much more than the intestine can reabsorb and so the fluid comes pouring out as watery diarrhea. The loss of fluids is so great that the patient can quickly become severely dehydrated, go into shock, and die within a few hours. The diarrhea fluid is teeming with huge numbers of the bacteria and these can rapidly spread to others, leading to epidemics.