posted
In 1885 Daniel Carrion established a link between Verruga peruana and Oroya fever. He was studying the preclinical phase of verruga peruana and injected himself with scrapings from a sore. He developed Oroya fever and died a short while later of it. In his honour the disease has been called Carrion's disease. Figure 3 is a picture of Daniel Carrion. It is also known as Bartonellosis after Alberto Barton who was the first to observe the bacteria Bartonella bacilliformis in 1909. He observed the bacteria inside erythrocytes (Alexander, 1995).
historic term for bartonellosis. A disease occurring in the valleys in the Andes Mountains in Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Columbia at altitudes of 600 to 3.700 meters. It is a generalized, acute, febrile, endemic, and systemic form of bartonellosis that appears in an acute febrile anaemic stage followed in several weeks by a nodular skin eruption. Two forms are recognized: the mild form verruga peruana and the severe form Oroya fever. The mild form is characterized by mild anemia and either miliary or nodular eruptions resembling Kaposi's sarcoma. The severe form is characterized by acute fever, pernicious anemia, and muscular pain and weakness. Between February and October 1987, a febrile illness killed 14 persons and seriously affected at least 14 others in Shumpillan, a remote Peruvian mountain village of 353 people. The illness was characterized by fever, headache, chills, and pallor. The fatality rate of untreated cases was 88%. The patients, 71% of whom were male, were 1-75 years of age. Fatal illnesses progressed from lethargy to coma to death in 3-60 days. Patients treated empirically with chloramphenicol survived. Bartonella bacilliformis was isolated from the whole blood of 3 patients. A serologic study revealed a high prevalence of antibodies to B. bacilliformis in the villagers. It is concluded that the villagers suffered from an epidemic of Oroya fever.
The Lyme Disease Network is a non-profit organization funded by individual donations. If you would like to support the Network and the LymeNet system of Web services, please send your donations to:
The
Lyme Disease Network of New Jersey 907 Pebble Creek Court,
Pennington,
NJ08534USA http://www.lymenet.org/
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic