Mikhail Dmitruk reports:
- At first glance, the possibility of "devouring people" by mushrooms seems doubtful. However, a doctor from Belgorod, Lidia Vasilievna Kozmina, seems to have really discovered a certain biological enemy of the human race, which for many years remained unnoticed and unpunished …
It started in 1980. A young man with a strange disease was sent to the laboratory for examination. From time to time, for no apparent reason, his temperature rose to 38 degrees. It would seem nothing to worry about. But this easily ill person said seriously to the laboratory assistants: "Girls, I feel that I will die soon." They did not believe him, because the attending physician suspected only malaria in him. They tried to find its pathogen in the patient's blood for a month. But they never found it.
And the patient, unexpectedly for doctors, very quickly became "heavy". Then, with horror, they discovered that he had septic endocarditis - an infectious lesion of the heart muscle. It was no longer possible to save the guy.
Kozmina did not throw away the test tubes with the deceased's blood taken for analysis. Examining it again under a microscope, she unexpectedly found in it the smallest microorganisms with a tiny nucleolus. For two months I tried to identify them until I found something similar in a book by the Moldovan author Shroit.
There were photographs and descriptions of strange microorganisms - mycoplasmas, which do not have a dense cell membrane. They are covered only by a thin membrane, so they easily change their shape. For example, from a spherical mycoplasma can stretch out like a worm and squeeze through narrow pores into a human cell. Even viruses are not capable of this.
But as is often the case in science, the first find raised more questions than answers. In Schroit's book, the researcher found a second candidate for the role of the causative agent of septic endocarditis. Both in appearance and in habits very similar to mycoplasma was the so-called el-form of bacteria. It appears when the patient is treated with penicillin, which prevents bacteria from forming a membrane. Previously, doctors thought that parasites would die without her. And then it turned out that they can live without a shell and even cause diseases, but the course is very unusual - as doctors say, atypically.
Finally, there was a third contender for the role of the killer of the unfortunate guy, the smallest - chlamydia. Some scientists called it a fungal spore, others a virus, but everyone agreed that this dwarf of the microworld freely penetrates into cells and parasitizes inside them.
Promotional video:
Alas, the first attempts to identify the secret killer gave rise to three versions, each of which could turn out to be false. But this search was not in vain. If now Kozmina found such a "trifle" in someone's blood, which had not been paid attention to before (this was not required according to the instructions), she raised the alarm. So that the doctors don't overlook the disease, as it happened with that guy …
In 1981, a pregnant woman with a diagnosis of fever was sent to the laboratory and instructed: "Look for the causative agent of malaria." Then the laboratory assistants "sowed" the patient's blood in a nutrient medium. In one "crop" the mycoplasmas already familiar to Kozmina really grew, and in the other - about horror! - appeared tiny … Trichomonas. The very ones that, according to official medicine, cause sexually transmitted diseases, and according to the "unofficial" opinion of a number of experts - many other "ailments of civilization."
However, Kozmina did not know about alternative studies then. She studied parasitology from Soviet textbooks, in which it is written that Trichomonas does not exist in the blood at all. They say that they live only in the urogenital cavity and are transmitted exclusively sexually. And Lydia Vasilievna found Trichomonas in the blood of a pregnant woman with symptoms like a guy who died of septic endocarditis!
In the book of one scientist, she read that Trichomonas reproduce … by spores. How to understand this, because the fungus has spores, and Trichomonas is considered, so to speak, an animal? If the opinion of scientists is correct, then these flagellates should form a mycelium in a person - mycelium … And indeed, in the analyzes of some patients under a microscope, something similar to a mycelium was seen.
- At first I wondered what kind of threads they were? - recalls Lydia Vasilievna. - Maybe cotton wool? But then I was surprised to find that the filaments are composed of … unicellular parasites. True, not from Trichomonas, but from mycoplasmas.
So, maybe this is one and the same microorganism, but at different stages of its development? Then it is not surprising that Trichomonas form spores, and mycoplasmas form mycelium. It's just that mycelium is growing in us …
For several years, Kozmina drove out of her head seditious thoughts that contradicted the opinion of the luminaries of medical science. But new facts and research results provided food for thought.
The key to the secret was a curious story that took place in the Republic of Chad. In one year, all children born were sick with encephalopathy. and for some reason unripe coconuts fell from all the palms. This fact interested scientists, and they found that diseases of people and plants are caused … by the same parasite - spiroplasma, which is a relative of mycoplasma and ureaplasma.
The new pathogen, according to the magazine "Miracles and Adventures", felt great in coconuts, and in the brains of children, and in the placenta of mothers. It was a downright universal parasite that freely penetrated into any organs of people and plants, finding them equally suitable for life. Who has such amazing abilities?
- I thought about this question for a long time, - Lidia Vasilievna continues, - and a year ago I received an answer quite unexpectedly. I found it not in the scientific works of the luminaries of microbiology, but … in the Children's Encyclopedia, edited by Maysuryan. So, in the second volume there is an editor's article about slime mold mushrooms. And colorful drawings are given to it: the appearance of slime molds and their internal structure, which is visible under a microscope. Looking at these pictures, I was amazed: it was these microorganisms that I had found in analyzes for many years, but could not identify them. And here everything was explained very simply and clearly.
It would seem, what does a slime mold mushroom, which reaches 20 centimeters in diameter, have to do with the smallest microorganisms that Lydia Vasilievna examined through a microscope? The most direct: the slime mold goes through several stages of development: from the spores grow "amoebas" and flagellates. They frolic in the mucous mass of the fungus, merging into larger cells - with several nuclei. And then they form the fruiting body of a slime mold - a classic mushroom on a leg, which, dries up, throws out spores.
At first, Kozmina could not believe her eyes. I read a bunch of scientific literature about slime molds and found a lot of support for my guess. In appearance and properties, the "amoebas" releasing tentacles were strikingly similar to ureaplasmas, "zoospores" with two flagella - to Trichomonas, and those that had discarded flagella and lost their membranes - to mycoplasma, etc. The fruiting bodies of slime molds remarkably resembled … polyps in the nasopharynx and gastrointestinal tract, papillomas on the skin, squamous cell carcinoma and other tumors.
It turned out that a slime mold lives in our body - the same one that can be seen on rotten logs and stumps. Previously, medical scientists could not recognize it due to its narrow specialization: some studied chlamydia, others - mycoplasma, and others - Trichomonas. None of them even thought that these are three stages of development of one fungus.
And now doctors and scientists may have a hope that a biological enemy of the human race has been identified - a universal causative agent of diseases of unknown etiology.
Lydia Vasilievna hopes that her hypothesis, despite its unexpectedness, will interest scientists-biologists and physicians, by joint efforts they will solve the biological charade that cunning parasites have asked people.
From the book: “XX century. Chronicle of the inexplicable. Opening after opening”. Nikolai Nepomniachtchi