Rickettsial Infections: A Clinician#x2019;s Diagnostic Dilemma
Keywords:
rickettsia, rash, fever, weil-felix test
Abstract
Rickettsial diseases are arthropod borne zoonotic infections that are being increasingly recognized as one of the causes of pyrexia of unknown origin (PUO). These pathogens are gram-negative bacteria causing fever and rash, usually transmitted to humans by tick or flea bite. These infections must be differentiated from other febrile illnesses such as enteric fever, malaria, dengue, leptospirosis, and infectious mononucleosis. The common clinical presentation includes fever with chills and rigor, headache, vomiting, cough, conjunctival congestion and eschar. Presenting with varied and non-specific symptoms, ignorance, and low index of suspicion, they are often under-diagnosed due to the unavailability of the reliable diagnostic test. Weil- Felix test (WFT) is a non-specific heterophile tube agglutination test in which antibodies against rickettsiae are detected. If timely treatment with doxycycline is instituted the adverse consequences can be well averted.
Downloads
- Article PDF
- TEI XML Kaleidoscope (download in zip)* (Beta by AI)
- Lens* NISO JATS XML (Beta by AI)
- HTML Kaleidoscope* (Beta by AI)
- DBK XML Kaleidoscope (download in zip)* (Beta by AI)
- LaTeX pdf Kaleidoscope* (Beta by AI)
- EPUB Kaleidoscope* (Beta by AI)
- MD Kaleidoscope* (Beta by AI)
- FO Kaleidoscope* (Beta by AI)
- BIB Kaleidoscope* (Beta by AI)
- LaTeX Kaleidoscope* (Beta by AI)
How to Cite
Published
2020-01-15
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Authors and Global Journals Private Limited
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.