Monday 15 July 2013

Resp virus causing gastro but little respiratory symptoms...

Hat tip to Secret Squirrel D for this.

To add to my first two post's today,this paper by de Jong and colleagues in the New England Journal of Medicine details a 4-year old male (4M) who presented with a 2-day history of fever, headache and diarrhoea which after admission progressed; cough, then to coma and death.

4M was found to have systemic influenza A(H5N1) virus infection (viable virus was isolated from cerebrospinal fluid, throat and rectal swabs and were RT-PCR positive).
4M and his sister (9F who died 2-weeks previously but had no diagnostic specimens collected) were diagnosed with acute encephalitis.

Chest X-rays were normal and 4M exhibited some lung sounds suggestive of infection after transfer to a paediatric referral hospital and he went on to respiratory failure.

This highlight my earlier points: respiratory viruses could spread from gastrointestinal disease and encephalitis has a lot of causes in addition to the usual suspects.

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