Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0040425 (tonsillitis)
 1,594 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The pattern of illness in 60 consecutive children with homozygous sickle cell disease who attended the Paediatric Emergency Room of a busy Lagos hospital with acute illness was studied prospectively. Their ages ranged from 3 months to 13 years with a peak in the 2nd year. There were twice as many boys as girls. The commonest symptoms were fever, limb or abdominal pain and cough, and the commonest signs were pallor and hepatomegaly. Painful crises occurred in 27, anaemic crises in 11, and a combination of these in 12 children. Infection was detected in 76% of subjects in crises. Infection was found in 82% of all the children and was mainly bacterial. The commonest infections were pneumonia (35%), bacteraemia (32%), tonsillitis/pharyngitis (17%) and osteomyelitis (8%). The predominant bacteria isolated were Klebsiella spp (38%), E. coli (23%), Staph. aureus (23%), Staph. albus (23%) and Pseudomonas spp (23%). Some children had multiple isolates. Bacterial infection was a major cause of morbidity in very young children and merits appropriate control and preventive measures in this age group. The spectrum of bacteria isolated makes it unlikely that the specific anti-pneumococcal measures widely advocated in Europe and America for young children with SCA would be appropriate in Nigeria.
 ...
PMID:Acute illness in Nigerian children with sickle cell anaemia. 244 66

Forty-five patients with homozygous sickle cell disease who had tonsillectomy for recurrent tonsillitis, when compared with 45 matched controls with haemoglobin genotype AA, showed significant differences in the clinical manifestations and complications of recurrent tonsillitis between the two groups. Although throat swabs in the sickle cell group were mostly negative because they were on prophylactic penicillin, all tonsils harboured Streptococcus pneumoniae when cultured. This study suggests the tonsils to be the more specific source of pneumococcal infection that causes systemic complications which increase morbidity and mortality in sickle cell disease. Although the sickle cell patients may be less clinically symptomatic with tonsillitis, the incidence of serious complications caused by pneumococcal infections, now shown to arise from the tonsils, is significant. Adenotonsillar hypertrophy is linked with an increased risk of a sleep apnoea which causes serious neurological complications such as cerebral infarction and stroke. Tonsillectomy has greatly reduced the incidence of complications from pneumococcal infections in the sickle cell group and should therefore be recommended for sickle cell patients taking prophylactic penicillin and still developing pneumococcal infections.
 ...
PMID:The significance of recurrent tonsillitis in sickle cell disease. 792 45