Gas gangrene
Pathophysiology

Soil-borne anaerobes are particularly well-adapted to surviving harsh conditions. Often, a scarcity of nutrition and competition for resources from numerous other species occurs. Changes in pH and temperature are often significant, also. Bacteria often possess the ability to create exotoxins to assist them in competing with other microbes in their natural environments. When such bacteria are able to enter a living host, they encounter a vast supply of nutrients, warm conditions, and an abundance of water. This enables the microbes to rapidly proliferate, far in excess of the immune system's capability to defend, as prokaryotic bacteria possess a far greater capacity for multiplication than the host's immune system. The combination of bacterial load and ability to multiply is the basis for the microbes' ability to cause massive infection. Alongside such rapid proliferation is a corresponding mass-production of exotoxin that causes severe damage to local tissue in the host. One such exotoxin is alpha toxin, which is produced by C. perfringens and is the key virulence factor in its pathogenesis.
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