Biomedicine & pharmacotherapy = Biomédecine & pharmacothérapie
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Lyme disease is transmitted by the tick Ixodes dammini ("deer tick") or a related ixodid tick. Early diagnosis of children with Lyme disease is difficult because the bite of the ixodid tick often goes unnoticed. Furthermore, erythema chronicum migrans, the characteristic rash of the disease, occurs in less than 50% of cases. ⋯ Lyme disease shares symptoms in common with septic arthritis and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Whenever a distinction between Lyme arthritis and septic arthritis is difficult to make, treatment should be directed at septic arthritis while serological tests for Lyme disease are pending. The physician should consider Lyme disease to be a possible diagnosis of any patient with arthritis and a history of rash or fever, idiopathic neurological disease, or a cardiac conduction defect--especially if there is a history of possible exposure to the carrier tick.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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Biomed. Pharmacother. · Jan 1989
Disability, physician consultation, and use of prescription medications in a population-based study of headache.
In a population-based telephone interview survey of 9,380 residents aged 12 to 29 yr in Washington County, Maryland, who reported having had a headache, 60% of females and 41% of males had had one or more headaches during the previous week; 14.4% of females and 6.0% of males in the study group had consulted a physician in the previous 12 months for a headache problem. The likelihood of consulting a physician differed according to the type of headache. Subjects with headache during the week before the interview meeting the criteria for certain migraine or certain mixed tension--migraine were twice as likely as subjects with all other types of headaches to consult a physician during the previous 12 months. ⋯ On the other hand, males with migraine headache during the previous week were more likely than females with migraine to consult a physician. Disability (defined as being absent from school or from work for all or part of the day) was relatively common among those subjects with a headache during the previous week (13.7% of females and 7.9% of males). However, even among those reporting disability as a result of their headache during the previous week, only 31% of females and 18% of males reported consulting a physician during the previous 12 months.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)