Kawasaki disease i.e. mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome refers to a rare condition affects mainly to children below five years age. The problem causes fever or severe high temperature, which fails to give respond to any medication and wide range of virus like symptoms, such as swelling in the glands, rashes and cracked or dry lips.
How Does Kawasaki Disease Affect The Body?
Kawasaki disease progresses with many complications and adverse effects in the human body, especially in the heart and blood vessels. Even in some cases, complications take place within only few months of the problem in its acute phase. (1) Kawasaki disease has adverse effects on heart and blood vessels of a patient. Accordingly-
Aneurysm– Inflammation in the blood vessels responsible to supply blood to your heart i.e. coronary arteries makes a specific section of your artery wall weak. As the blood passes from weak part of your artery wall, blood pressure forces it to bulge in the outward direction as similar to a balloon. Doctors refer this condition as aneurysm. However, depending on lifestyle of a patient, aneurysm cures or heals with time. (2)
Thrombosis– In some cases, aneurysm results in thrombosis i.e. blood clot in the weak section of your artery.
Heart Attack– When thrombosis goes out of control, it causes heart attack. Especially, the situation takes place whenever a specific part of one’s heart muscles dies due to lack of oxygen supply or any other related heart problem, including the interruption or blockage in blood supply towards the heart. (3)
Rupture or Burst– In rare cases, Kawasaki disease and aneurysm may cause rupture or burst, which further results in severe form of internal bleeding.
Key Statistics on Complications and Adverse Effects of Kawasaki Disease
Coronary Aneurysms– About 25 percent of total 115 patients kept under research experienced coronary aneurysms.
Auditory Loss– If we talk about auditory loss, we have observed about 33percent of total patients dealt with sensory neural auditory loss at the time of sub-acute and acute phases of the problem. On the other side, approximately 11percent of total patients retained auditory loss for about six months post initial assessment.
Other Complications
A small percentage i.e. 0.9 percent patients observed facial palsy and 9.5percent patients had ataxia in both sub-acute and acute phases of Kawasaki disease.
About 13 percent of patients i.e. 15 patients dealt with ophthalmologic complications, among which uveitis is found in 13 patients, while remaining ones suffered from papilledema and conjunctival type of hemorrhage.
A patient suffered from chorea combined with magnetic resonance type of angiography to highlight changes consistent with his/her cerebral ischemia.
Another patient experienced thoracic aorta aneurysm and necrotizing vasculitis, which progresses to the loss of tongue tip and peripheral gangrene.
A few patients i.e. about 23 children showed behavioral changes over their convalescence.
Until now, doctors have not understood the exact cause behind Kawasaki disease. However, many of them thought as because of an infection or infectious agent.
Kawasaki disease takes place because of viral or bacterial infection. However, updated research related to the problem fail to identify the bacterial or viral cause. In addition, the disease never affects any baby below 6 months age. Considering this fact, we should say that newborn babies remain protected from the problem.
Thanks to the antibodies, i.e. proteins responsible for destroying various harmful toxins and disease carrying organisms, which passed to them from their mother at the time of breastfeeding. Many old children and adult people often become immune to the causes of Kawasaki disease, as they affect from it rarely.
Genetic Factors to Cause Kawasaki Disease
As only less numbers of kids suffer from Kawasaki disease, doctors may conclude that such kids predispose to the condition genetically. This implies that genes or genetic material units, which they inherit from parents, somehow make relatively more prone to suffer from Kawasaki disease.
References-
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21691693
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4137746/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24034380
Also Read:
- Can A Child Get Kawasaki Disease Twice?
- Do Adults Get Kawasaki Disease & It’s Diagnosis
- Is Kawasaki Disease Lifelong?
- Does Kawasaki Disease Have Long Term Effects?
- Is Kawasaki Disease A Disability?
- How Many People Have Died From Kawasaki Disease?
- What Triggers Kawasaki Disease & What’s The Recurrence Rate?
