An epidemic of Kawasaki syndrome in Hawaii

Abstract

A community-wide outbreaks of Kawasaki syndrome, apparently the first in the United States, occurred in Hawaii in the first half of 1978. Twenty-seven of the 33 cases were subjected to intensive epidemiologic and microbiologic study. Patients with Kawasaki syndrome, compared to the general population, more often had Japanese ancestry, high-income status, and possibly a history of respiratory infection in the preceding month (44%). Staphylococcus aureus was not found in high frequency in the patients (15%), and viral cultures and serologic studies, immune electron microscopy, and guinea pig and primate inoculation did not reveal a causative microorganism. Febrile illnesses in guinea pigs inoculated with a skin biopsy specimen should not be further passaged.

A genomewide linkage analysis of Kawasaki disease: evidence for linkage to chromosome 12

“…124 cM D15S128 D15S1002 D15S1048 D15S1007 D15S1042 D15S978 D15S117 D15S153 D15S131 D15S205 D15S127 D15S120 103 cM 114 cM D16S423 D16S404 D16S3075 D16S3017 D16S3046 D16S3068 D16S3136 D16S415 D16S503 D16S515 D16S516 D16S3091 D16S520 128 cM D17S849 D17S831 D17S938 D17S1852 D17S947 D17S921 D17S925 D17S1872 D17S1868 D17S787 D17S948 D17S949 D17S785 D17S784 D17S928 D18S59 D18S63 D18S452 D18S1153 D18S53 D18S478 D18S1102 D18S474 D18S64 D18S68 D18S61 D18S1161 D18S462 D18S70 123 cM One is an ethnic difference in disease prevalence: in Hawaii, increased prevalence in the Japanese American population has been observed (Dean et al 1982). The other is familial aggregation of the disease: the relative risk of siblings (ks) for KD is about ten, and two-generation KD patients have been observed more frequently than expected (Fujita et al 1989;Uehara et al 2003).…”

Distribución geográfica de la enfermedad de Kawasaki en Chile

“…Esta teoría del origen infeccioso de la EK se basa en datos epidemiológicos obtenidos por medio de los egresos hospitalarios por EK, encuestas nacionales o reportes de esta enfermedad, y datos clínicos, que asemejan el cuadro clínico de la enfermedad con los síntomas y el comportamiento de infecciones virales y bacterianas. Existen síntomas similares entre EK e infección por adenovirus y escarlatina, variaciones estacionales de incidencia 4 , brotes epidémicos [5][6][7] y agrupación espacio-temporal de los casos 8 . La incidencia de la EK ha ido aumentando de forma sostenida en muchos países del mundo 7,[9][10][11] .…”

“…La incidencia reportada varía dependiendo de factores geográficos, étnicos y socio-económicos. El efecto del nivel socioeconómico sobre la incidencia de EK ha sido reportada principalmente durante períodos de brotes epidémicos de EK 5,6 , aunque su efecto sobre la incidencia de EK no es clara en países como Japón 12 . Un estudio descriptivo de la epidemiología de la EK en Chile entre los años 2001 y 2007 mostró que la tasa de incidencia de EK en Chile se ha incrementado gradualmente, estimándose una tasa de incidencia de 8,4 casos por 100.000 niños bajo 5 años entre 2005 y 2007 13 .…”

CD40 ligand gene and Kawasaki disease

“…4,5 Second, marked ethnic differences in KD susceptibility exist with increased prevalence of KD among Japanese Americans in Hawaii. 6 The human genome project has provided us with new tools for examining genetic susceptibility to disease. Almost 200 000 wellcharacterized single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for the entire genome of the Japanese population are now available (IMS JSNP database, http://snp.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp/).…”