bacillus

However, if the bacilli become active—when someone’s immune system is compromised, as with AIDS—they multiply rapidly into a bone-eating, lung-consuming illness that, unless treated, is fatal.

Swabs from the skin, nose and mouth, as well as saliva and stool samples, showed that 34 percent of all participants had antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as resistant Gram-negative bacilli or vancomycin-resistant enterococci.

Scientists postulate that the bacillus originated in some lower animal and jumped to humans.

But tuberculosis is also curable and preventable, caused by a bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and spread when people who are sick expel bacteria into the air, usually by coughing.

Koch complied with a vial swarming with cholera bacilli.