400621 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Persistent Organic Pollutant, Brucellosis, Hepatomegaly
18 Feb 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Brucellosis can affect any organ or organ system, and 90% of patients have a cyclical (undulant) fever. Though variable, symptoms can also include these clinical signs: headache, weakness, arthralgia, depression, weight loss, fatigue, and liver dysfunction. Between 20 and 60% of cases have osteoarticular complications: arthritis, spondylitis, or osteomyelitis. Up to 20% of cases can have genitourinary involvement; orchitis and epididymitis are most common. Cardiovascular involvement can include endocarditis resulting in death. Chronic brucellosis is hard to define; length, type, and response to treatment are variable. Blood donations of infected persons should not be accepted. Congenitally infected infants can exhibit low birth weight, failure to thrive, jaundice, hepatomegaly, splenomegaly, respiratory difficulty, and general signs of sepsis (fever, vomiting). Brucella species are small, gram-negative, facultative coccobacilli, most lacking a capsule, endospores, or native plasmids. They are intracellular within the host organism,and show environmental persistence outside the host.
