BIOS 230 Lecture Notes - Lecture 31: Leptospirosis, Epidemiology, Arbovirus
Document Summary
They knew it was an outbreak because there was a much higher number of similar illnesses in the adolescent population than any of the local practitioners of the health dept had routinely recognized. (based on common sense) Create a tentative case definition: investigator went to the hospital to review case files hospitalized for common symptoms/exposures. Records also indicated 4 lumbar punctures with 3 being normal and 1 having elevated protein levels and normal sugar levels. Normal glucose was evidence against tb or fungal meningitis. All blood, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid were sterile. Urinalysis performed on 26 patients revealed that 22 had more than 5 wbc per high-power field with a slight proteinuria (protein in urine) in 10 cases. Unexpected for any common seasonal infection in a presumably healthy adolescent population. Washington state health dept met with the benton-franklin county health dept.
