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Whipple disease |
Details
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Whipple disease (known as intestinal lipodystrophy) is a very rare medical condition that affects mostly males between ages of 30 to 60. This disease results, from an infection with the organism known as tropheryma whippelii. A small intestine’s lining is always infected severely, but infection can also spread to other individual’s body, including lungs, eye, brain, heart, and joints. Whipple disease symptoms include: diarrhea, painful and inflamed joints, and skin darkening. Serious malabsorption results in anemia and weight loss. Other symptoms may involve: pain, coughing, abdominal pain, and while breathing, resulted from pleura inflammation (the membrane layers which cover the lungs). Fluid can accumulate in the spaces between the pleural layer (pleural effusion) and the lymph nodes in the chest center can become enlarged. Patients with whipple disease can progress heart murmurs, which slow the infections that reached the person’s heart, or enlargement of the liver, which shows that infection has reached the person’s liver. Signs of loss of memory, confusion, or uncontrolled eye movements show that the infection has affected the brain. If the whipple disease is left untreated, the disorder becomes progressive and fatal. A physician diagnoses whipple disease by taking a biopsy of the small intestine or enlarged lymph nodes that are studied under a microscope and reveal abnormalities. The treatment of whipple disease include such antibiotics as Penicillin, Sulfasalazine, Apicillin, and Tetracycline. Symptoms improve rapidly with these drugs, but full tissue recovery can take up to 2 years, and may recur.
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| Category |
Disease Conditions > W
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| Related Searches |
whipple procedure, whipple surgery |
| Date Submitted |
27-Oct-2005
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