Fever, hemorrhagic
Fever, hemorrhagic: A number of diseases characterized by an abrupt onset of high fever and chills, headache, cold and cough, and pain in the muscles, joints and abdomen with nausea and vomiting followed by bleeding into the kidney and elsewhere. Known also as hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome.
Many arboviruses (including those in the families Togaviridae, Flaviviridae, Filoviridae, and Bunyaviridae) and the Hantaviruses, spread by rodents or biting insects, can cause epidemic hemorrhagic fever. The Ebola virus is a notorious cause of epidemic hemorrhagic fever.
Bioterrorism — There has been concern about the hemorrhagic fever as a possible weapon for bioterrorism. However, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress, in a 1999 report considered hemorrhagic fever to be an “unlikely” biologic threat for terrorism, because these viruses are very difficult to obtain and process, unsafe to handle, and relatively unstable. The lethal effects of these viruses were deemed by the GAO to depend on the strain but can be “very high.”
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- Fever, Mediterranean
Fever, Mediterranean: A inherited disorder of unknown cause featuring short recurring bouts of fever together with pain in the joints, chest or abdomen. Also called Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF). Between attacks, the patient seems healthy (when FMF is more difficult to diagnose). The gene for FMF (autosomal recessive, on chromosome 16) was reportedly identified in […]
- Fever, Meuse
Fever, Meuse: Named for the Meuse River area, one of the great battlegrounds of World War I. Also known as trench fever. Meuse or trench fever is a disease borne by body lice that was first recognized in the trenches of World War I, when it is estimated to have affected more than a million […]
- Fever, Philippine hemorrhagic
Fever, Philippine hemorrhagic: A syndrome due to the dengue virus that tends to affect children under 10, causing abdominal pain, hemorrhage (bleeding) and circulatory collapse (shock). Known also as dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), it starts abruptly with high continuous fever and headache plus respiratory and intestinal symptoms with sore throat, cough, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal […]
- Fever, puerperal
Fever, puerperal: Fever that lasts for more than 24 hours within the first 10 days after a woman has had a baby. Puerperal fever is due to an infection, most often of the placental site within the uterus. If the infection involves the bloodstream, it constitutes puerperal sepsis. Puerperal fever has gone by a number […]