It was only one week into the new school year and Chelsea Day, 13, was already feeling run down. Her head was pounding, her throat was sore and the typically avid soccer player was sleeping every chance she could.“I was exhausted,” said Chelsea, an eighth grader from Cleveland, who thought she was simply getting used to school again. “As soon as I woke up, I wanted to go back to sleep.”
But a few days later her symptoms got even worse. The glands in her neck became swollen and the left side of her abdomen grew so enlarged that her mother rushed her to the emergency room.
It turned out she had infectious mononucleosis, or mono. Also known as “the kissing disease” because it is spread by close contact, the infection has become something of a rite of passage for many adolescents and young adults. Symptoms, which can last for months, include severe fatigue, fever, sore throats, swollen glands and an enlarged spleen.
Some 95 percent of adults in the United States have been infected with Epstein-Barr, the herpes virus that causes mono, by age 35 to 40. But unlike other herpes viruses, like chickenpox, most people who become infected with Epstein-Barr virus never develop symptoms. And because mono is so common, some experts fear the disease has become trivialized among physicians and the research community.
Read the rest of the article here.
No comments:
Post a Comment