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Monday 16th January, 2006
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A number of early symptoms for meningococcal disease in children could
substantially speed up diagnosis.
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Researchers have identified a number of early symptoms
for meningococcal disease in children that could
substantially speed up diagnosis, reporting their findings
online in The Lancet today (Wednesday January 11, 2005).
Meningococcal disease is the most common infectious cause of
death in children in many developed countries. The disease can
progress from initial symptoms to death within hours, so early
diagnosis is crucial. However, the classic symptoms of the disease ?
rash, headache, stiff neck, sensitivity to light, and impaired
consciousness ? occur late in the pre-hospital illness and currently
parents and doctors are over-reliant on these for diagnosis.
To investigate the early clinical features of the disease,
Matthew Thompson (University of Oxford, UK) and colleagues sent
questionnaires to parents of 448 children with meningococcal
disease. They also looked at the children's medical records. They
found that the classic symptoms of the disease developed late, with
an average onset of 13-22 hours. By contrast, 72% of the children
had early symptoms of infection (sepsis) ? leg pain, cold hands and
feet, and abnormal skin color - that developed at an average of 8
hours. These early clinical features should be promoted to parents
and doctors to substantially speed up diagnosis of this potentially
fatal infection in children, state the authors.
Dr Thompson states: "Recognizing early symptoms of sepsis
[infection] could increase the proportion of children identified by
primary-care physicians and shorten the time to hospital admission.
The framework within which meningococcal disease is diagnosed should
be changed to emphasize identification of these early symptoms by
parents and clinicians."
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