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Filed under Exanthems

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Now I want to switch over and talk a bit about enteroviruses, and I’m going to say more at the end about enteroviruses. But a lot of clinical manifestations can occur with enterovirus infections. This is almost 40 years ago I occupied my time studying these things so everybody yawns when I try to make a big deal out of this. So I’m just going to go through and give you some major manifestations of what you should be aware of. Then we’ll come back and talk specifically about enterovirus epidemiology. I’m going to talk about EcHO-9 coxsackie A-9 and coxsackie A-16 as examples. EcHO virus 9 was the first of the enteroviruses to be well characterized with exanthems, with exanthem and aseptic meningitis. That you have fever, headache, nuchal rigidity, nausea, vomiting, various findings relating to aseptic meningitis. Rash occurs in about one-third of the cases but it’s adversely related to age. The older you are, the less likely you are to have rash. Other findings are typical enterovirus manifestations. The rash is rubelliform, erythematous, maculopapular, discreet. Generally starts centrally. It looks like this, and there are also some petechiae here. This is another child with petechial lesions. So the important thing here is that you have an illness with fever, some evidence of meningitis and on LP they have aseptic meningitis. The cell count usually in the meningitis has a predominance of polys early and you have petechiae popping out right in front of you as well as a rash. So the big thing is differential from meningococcemia. And this you can’t do. You are not able to do this clinically so when you have that scenario with fever you need to treat these patients as if they have meningococcemia. Now this is not only due to EcHO-9. You see this with multiple other enteroviruses. Just to show you some pictures. These almost ulcerative purpuric lesions look like meningococcemia. This is a child with a coxsackie A-9 infection. This by comparison is a child with meningococcemia. So the message is that you can have these enterovirus exanthems even without meningitis and they look like meningococcemia, and you need to treat them as if they were. You can’t differentiate them and sometimes, for example at Ft. Leonard Wood, actually both were circulating at the same time and there were cases that had meningococcemia during the outbreak of EcHO type 9 disease.
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Now coxsackie A-9; the reason I’m showing this is that this can cause rashes, maculopapular and petechial rashes, but it can also have vesicular and urticarial lesions. These frequently get misdiagnosed as contact dermatitis or poison ivy and bug bites. So this is a child who happens to have coxsackie A-9, has lesions that were quite pruritic and they look like papular urticaria. They look like bug bites. Urticaria around a central vesicular lesion. This is another enterovirus that looks like bug bites on this child, and this child as well. Also urticaria, large urticaria. This occurs in outbreaks that the first thing a lot of people think of are foods, but if you have this with fever it’s likely a viral infection, and it can be several different viruses, but particularly in the summertime, enteroviruses. This is a child that looks a little bit like having chicken pox but went on to have lesions that look like those you see in allergic purpura, and went on to have massive purpura that you see here. Looking like DIC, although she was not that sick. This for comparison is a child with scabies. If you scrape these lesions, if you scrape these other lesions you get nothing. You just get some normal epithelial cells if you do it vigorously. Whereas if you scrape poison ivy or if you scrape bug bites they are loaded with eosinophils. Here you can see the organism as well.

Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Filed under Exanthems

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Now a change of pace, from classic exanthems. The first group I want to talk about are four illnesses that have some similarities with scarlet fever. The first of these are illness due to exfoliative toxin-producing staphylococci and there are four manifestations; bullosa impetigo, Ritter’s disease, scalded-skin syndrome and staphylococcal scarlatiniform eruption. These staph are predominantly group II. They are not particularly prevalent today but there are large cycles, so they will be back. The staph are not particularly invasive, so these diseases without treatment run their course, even though you should treat them. This is bullosa impetigo. The important thing here is that the baby has been exposed to staph locally and the toxin is produced locally, then you get a bullous lesion where the toxin was produced. This is scalded skin syndrome where the staphylococcal infection is here and you have dissemination of toxin and you get this diffuse erythematous rash that looks like scarlet fever but it desquamates in quicker and bigger areas. This is the child recovering from this. Next is staphylococcal scarlatiniform eruption and this looks like scarlet fever, but it is usually in a patient where you have no focus because the staphylococcal infection is asymptomatic. It’s frequently in the throat but there are no throat symptoms. So again you have scarlet fever-like rash with the desquamation frequently being a little more coarse than that that you would see with streptococcal scarlet fever. This is the quiz. This is a child with chicken pox who has secondary infection of individual lesions with phage group II staphylococci. So you have local toxin and bullae around individual chicken pox lesions.
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Erythema infectiosum and this is caused by parvovirus B19. It has a case-to-case interval of 6-14 days. The important thing is that after exposure about a week later you are contagious, but generally asymptomatic or have a mild fever. Then a week after that the rash occurs and at that time the patient is no longer contagious. The rash starts on the face with a “slapped cheek” appearance. The original rash starts centrally, spreads peripherally, is not very diagnostic, but takes on a lace-like pattern. The rash is more prominent on extensive surfaces and adults have arthralgias and arthritis. This is a classic picture from almost 100 years ago, showing the slapped cheek appearance with circumoral pallor. This is a little boy with a real disease. Not too unhappy. This is a picture of a lace-like rash and here is a photograph of what it looks like. The big issue of parvovirus B19 we’ve already mentioned as far as infection in pregnant women.

Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Filed under Exanthems

Okay, next is rubella. This is a long incubation period disease which, for children, is 17 days from exposure to onset of rash. Now with adults you have considerable prodrome, which goes unrecognized in children. Adults will tell you they have pain on lateral gaze, and they will have headache and sometimes photophobia. Also lymphadenopathy, subauricular and posterior auricular. Adults may not recognize it but they will just tell you it hurts when they comb their hair. The rash is erythematous, maculopapular but the lesions are discreet. They start centrally, spread peripherally and a very important thing is the rash, particularly in older people, is pruritic. Therefore it frequently, since they have minimal fever, it gets written off as a contact dermatitis. A number of years ago we had circumstances where an obstetrician got rubella but because his rash was pruritic his colleagues said, “Don’t worry about it. It’s contact dermatitis.” Then two nurses got it 17 days later and all told 240 pregnant women were exposed. So when you think of contact dermatitis, particularly in a pregnant woman, make sure it’s not rubella.
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So this is an adolescent. His chest is erythematous, maculopapular and discreet. This is another patient with a little bit more marked lesions, and this is showing posterior auricular lymphadenopathy. Adults very frequently have both arthralgias and arthritis as well.
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The next is varicella and this also is a long incubation period disease, with about 16 days to the onset of rash. Now you’ll see in textbooks about a 1-2 day prodrome but I really don’t think there is much of a prodrome. Usually the first lesion is rash but it’s frequently overlooked because it’s only one or two lesions. So the patients are contagious when they have rash, they are not contagious before they have a rash. The rash starts centrally, spreads peripherally. The main manifestation are vesicles but the vesicles start out as papules and maculopapule vesicles and scabbing over. And there are more lesions centrally than peripherally. At any one time you’ll see lesions at various stages. This is a young adult with mild disease. Here are the lesions at different stages. Here are some more classic teardrop-like lesions. This is an old fashioned Zenk-prep showing giant cells. The reason I show this is that the diagnosis of varicella is not always easy, and frequently it is over-diagnosed and this creates havoc if you have immunocompromised patients exposed. So you need to make a diagnosis and the way to do that today is direct antigen test on a lesion. Now if the laboratory … if the people in the lab aren’t very sophisticated you may get back a negative result when actually it was not an adequate preparation. So any negative result, you want to make sure that the lab reports cells. If they don’t report epithelial cells then the test is not valid and so in a way, old Zenk was good because it was very clear. You had to see cells and you had to see abnormal cells. So if you get a test, a direct antigen test on a vesicle, and they don’t tell you there were cells there, you should question them about that.
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Comments (1) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Monday, October 26th, 2009

Filed under Exanthems

Measles and smallpox were present 2,000 years ago and what I call newer exanthems are older than most of you in the room, but when the virus discovery period with the use of tissue culture occurred in the 1950’s a lot of new syndromes and viral infections were discovered. The other thing that has happened because of immunizations, the classic exanthems have changed. You rarely see measles and rubella. So what I’ll do now is just quickly go through the classic exanthems and then talk about what I call newer exanthems.
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So first is scarlet fever. This has a short incubation period and illness starts with fever, vomiting, sore throat. Rash appears 12-48 hours later. The enanthem is streptococcal pharyngitis. The rash appears as red “sandpaper” which is the best description. There are lines and creases, so-called Pastia’s lines, with hyperpigmentation, circumoral pallor. The clinical manifestation is clear but then there is desquamation. This is tonsillitis but also you can see circumoral pallor. A tongue is first what’s called “white strawberry tongue” where the tongue is white with red dots, then later on in the disease is red strawberry tongue, rash like red sandpaper, Pastia’s lines that you see here, and then a little later on desquamation which is fairly fine but very clear.
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Next classic is measles. Measles has a relatively long incubation period compared to newer viral exanthems. So about nine days to the first symptoms, and they are fever, cough, coryza, conjunctivitis. About 11 days are complex spots and then rash occurs about day 13. The rash is erythematous, maculopapular, goes to confluence, starts centrally and spreads peripherally, lasts about seven days and there is considerable fever with measles. These are Koplik spots and the important thing is that there are not just a few dots here, they go all the way around here. The other thing is the red background. You can look in adults and you will see things that look like Koplik spots but they are ectopic sebaceous glands. More important than the spots is the red background and that will stay there a day or two after the spots are gone. Conjunctivitis that we see here. This picture is actually to show photophobia. The child was unhappy with the camera. The rash then, erythematous, maculopapular and confluent. Sort of like heaped up-like lesions. This is just the general picture. Later on in the illness there is considerable endothelial damage and so you get this brawny, coppery appearance that you see in this child. Now that’s classic measles. One of the things that you may see today is measles modified because of previous vaccine, or occasionally you get a rash with immunization. And that rash is rubelliform, erythematous, maculopapular, but discreet. Usually without Koplik spots and without serious illness like this that you see here.

Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Filed under Tyrosinemia

This is the end of the story, of the little boy you saw at the beginning with tyrosinemia. Here he is – I must add, three transplants later – and here’s his brother. Both children had hereditary tyrosinemia, both transplanted, both doing very nicely.
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Biliary Atresia. Here is your classic very yellow little baby; great big belly, obviously jaundiced, obviously has ascites. You can probably sense that the little arms and legs are kind of skinny. Sleepy, sick-looking child. This little girl had biliary atresia and was awaiting transplant at the time of this picture. Which brings us to the most common cause of obstructive jaundice beyond the neonatal period, which is biliary atresia. It occurs about 1:10,000, maybe up to 1:14,000. It presents, generally speaking, in full term babies and it’s a conjugated hyperbilirubinemia occurring within the first four weeks of life. And I really can’t stress this enough. It is truly amazing to me that many of the children that we eventually see here are not diagnosed early. The reason being is that people will do a total bilirubin as a screening test, and will not – after the first two weeks of life – bother to fractionate it. If there is only one thing that you get out of this afternoon’s talk, if you see a child after two weeks of age that’s yellow, you must get a fractionated bilirubin because otherwise you are going to miss children with conjugated hyperbilirubinemia that have biliary atresia who could potentially have procedures that would gain them a considerable amount of life expectancy.
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In the classic form, there is complete atresia of the external biliary system, leads on to fibrosis, eventually cirrhosis and all the ravages of end-stage liver disease. Now without that biliary drainage procedure, which is what you want to do before two months of age, these children will inevitably die within the first one or two years of life. As I’ve said, early diagnosis is essential. I’ve already made the big point about conjugated hyperbilirubinemia. When you do the biliary drainage procedure, the so-called Kasai procedure, and you do it at the right time – less than three months of age – you are generally going to buy some time for that child. If the diagnosis is late and you start trying to do these drainage procedures beyond three months of age, less than a quarter of those children will have any benefit at all from the surgery. And they follow a progressive downhill course. Even with biliary drainage performed at a good time, eventually about three-quarters of the children with biliary atresia will eventually require a new liver. Some of them within the first months or years of life, some of them will go even out into their teenage years. And the progression of this disease is highly variable. Interestingly, even when you do do the biliary drainage procedure, the cirrhosis problem can continue to develop as the child gets older and they may present to you perhaps at 11 or 12-years-of-age without jaundice but with portal hypertension and bleeding. This is because of the cirrhosis. The biliary drainage procedures worked but the cirrhosis is ongoing. What tells you that the biliary drainage procedure has failed? Well, the first thing that is the tip-off is that these children get recurrent cholangitis. The jaundice comes back, they get fevers and then they start developing all the problems of chronic liver disease; portal hypertension and cirrhosis.

Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Filed under Tyrosinemia

The treatment, particularly if you are savvy and you make this diagnosis early, is immunosuppression. The mainstay is still steroids. You might add 6-MP, azathioprine or even some of the newer immunosuppressants to try and control the process. You have to remember that autoimmune diseases, no matter which one it is, are multi-system diseases so whether the presentation is in the liver or somewhere else, you should look at the joints, you look for funny rashes, you look for ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, diabetes, thyroid problems. So don’t just stop at the liver. Make sure you have really carefully gone through all the other systems that could be involved.
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Now what about chronic hepatitis that we cause? Well, there is a group of babies who are born, for various reasons, with short-gut syndrome with inability to be enterally fed who find themselves long-term on parenteral nutrition. And this is quite an important cause of chronic liver disease in these children. We are really not totally clear on the etiology but we do know that a chronic inflammatory process begins, progressing to fibrosis and then to cirrhosis. Typically it’s in the neonates who cannot tolerate enteral feedings right from the get-go. So the more enteral feedings you can somehow or another get into these babies the more likely you are to protect their liver. We now see, unfortunately, more and more children referred to us who have short-gut syndrome whose livers have now gone into end-stage liver disease and who require a combined liver and intestinal transplant, if they have any hope of survival.
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Then of course when you get to a lecture like this there are always the ones that we don’t understand. The so-called cryptogenics. This is probably a very interesting group of diseases and we are just not smart enough to know what they are. Probably some of them are autoimmune. We don’t know clearly what causes them but what we do know is that they can go all the way to end-stage liver disease and you find yourself transplanting a child and you have to say to the parents, “Well, we know your child needs a liver transplant but we don’t know what caused it.” So this is a whole area that is open for new enlightenment.
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Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Monday, October 19th, 2009