This book describes Mucocutaneous Lymph Node Syndrome (Kawasaki Disease), Diagnosis and Treatment and Related Diseases

Mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome is a childhood disease

The disease occur in children of all ages

It typically cause fever and lymph node swellings

Mostly it causes the skin to start peeling.

Patients present with first with fever then skin and eye dryness

There may be also swelling of feet and hand with redness

There is also sore throat with sometimes tonsillar swelling

This is followed by red rash with skin peeling

Diagnosis is by symptoms and elimination of other diseases

Electrocardiography may be done to check on heart myopathy

Complications are vasculitis, coronary heart disease and arthritis

There may be also blood vessel aneurysm and myocarditis

Treatment is usually with immunogammaglobulin

Aspirin is also used under proper doctor’s supervision

Corticosteroids is useful to treat arthritis and myocarditis

Most children make a full recovery after about 3 weeks

-An original poem by Kenneth Kee

Mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome, also known as Kawasaki disease, is a rare condition that primarily affects young children and typically causes fever, swelling of the lymph nodes, and symptoms affecting the skin and mucous membranes.

Mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome is a more suitable name for this because of its symptoms affecting the skin and mucous membranes and lymph node enlargement than Kawasaki disease.

It is characterized by inflammation of the blood vessels throughout the body, including the coronary arteries, and can lead to complications such as aneurysms or heart disease.

Mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome happens mainly in children below 5 years.

It does not transmit from child to child (is not contagious).

The disorder happens most often during the periods of late winter and early spring.

Mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome can harm the coronary arteries which carry blood to the heart muscle.

Most of the treated children can recover from the disease without long-term disorders.

The precise cause is not known, but it is thought to be linked to a wind-borne or water-borne pathogen infection.

An autoimmune disease has been proposed as the cause.

In recent years there have been studies that have revealed certain genetic markers (such as HLA-B51 and HLA-Bw22j2 serotypes, chemokine receptor gene-cluster CCR2-CCR5 haplotypes and FCGR3A polymorphism of the IgG receptor IIIa) demonstrate a predisposition to the disease.

The siblings of patients are 10-20 times likely to develop the disease compared to normal people.

The triad of symptoms which are frequent are:

Fever together with headache persisting for more than 5 days

Swelling of one or more lymph nodes in the neck

Blotchy red rash over the entire body with typical skin peeling in the second week of illness

The diagnosis is always clinical.

Classical symptoms and signs are 5 days of high fever, lymph nodes enlargement, rash and peeling of the skin from the fingers and toes.

Echocardiography is the investigation of choice to assess for coronary artery aneurysms.

The standard treatment during the disorder's acute stage is high-dose aspirin and immune globulin.

Most children who receive these treatments improve rapidly within 24 hours.

For a small percentage of patients, the fever persists.

These children may necessitate a second round of intravenous immunoglobulin.

There are new clinical trials with the use of infliximab, etanercept, and anakinra.

TABLE OF CONTENT

Introduction

Chapter 1 Mucocutaneous Lymph Node Syndrome

Chapter 2 Causes

Chapter 3 Symptoms

Chapter 4 Diagnosis

Chapter 5 Treatment

Chapter 6 Prognosis

Chapter 7 Scarlet fever

Chapter 8 Infectious Mononucleosis

Epilogue