Cause of Kawasaki syndrome

Venomous poison evidently causes Kawasaki syndrome

05/20/2014

In the so-called „Kawasaki disease“ It is an acute, high-fever inflammation of small and medium-sized blood vessels, which can affect the whole body and all organs. Children who are between the ages of half a year and five years of age are most likely to suffer from the syndrome. If it is not treated, it can lead to damage to the coronary vessels and even to a heart attack in an emergency. So far, the cause of the syndrome was largely unexplained - but now scientists have apparently identified fungi of the genus Candida as a trigger.

High-fever disease affects mainly Japanese toddlers
The „Kawasaki disease“ (also: mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome) is a well-known since 1961, acute, high-fever disease, which affects primarily infants. Rarely in Germany and other countries, the disease is particularly likely to affect Japanese children and is typically characterized by high, persistent fever, nasopharyngeal rash, conjunctivitis, conjunctivitis, and swelling of the lymph nodes. If the syndrome - named after the discoverer Tomisaku Kawasaki - is detected early and treated accordingly, it usually heals without complications. On the other hand, it can be dangerous if it remains undetected or is not taken on time, because then there is the risk that the coronary arteries also become inflamed, which can lead to the formation of aneurysm and, in an emergency, even to a heart attack.

Causes so far unknown
The causes of Kawasaki syndrome have been largely unknown so far, it has often been suggested that an overreaction of the body's defense system could be responsible. But now researchers have apparently brought light into the darkness and identified the trigger. As the scientists currently report in the "Proceedings" of the US National Academy of Sciences ("PNAS"), a fungus is responsible for the disease that comes with the air flow from northeastern China to Japan.

Researchers gathered in 2011 first findings on Kawasaki
As early as 2011, an international team of researchers led by climate scientist Xavier Rodó from the Catalan Research Institute (ICREA) in Barcelona in the journal Nature reported that the disease was apparently related to a specific wind pattern. At that time, the researchers had already found that in a particular weather situation in Japan particularly many cases of the syndrome had occurred and therefore started a computer simulation with the wind conditions and the particle transport in the air flow of the respective days. The team came across a region in northeastern China, in which the disease was suspected, which is then carried by wind. The background: This area is dominated by agriculture.

Large quantities of mushrooms of the genus „Candida“ found in samples
Now Xavier Rodó and colleagues have been able to gain new insights. In further experiments, the researchers took now from the aircraft aerosol samples over Japan from two to three kilometers in height and then examined these in the laboratory for fungi and bacteria. The result: In the samples was a large amount of mushrooms of the genus „Candida“, which are known as the cause of various human diseases and cause in mice the typical for Kawasaki vascular inflammation. According to the scientists, this fungus would also be the trigger of the disease - which would also correspond to the relatively short incubation period of less than 24 hours.„A fungal toxin could be traced as a potential causative agent of Kawasaki disease (KD) in accordance with an agricultural source, a short incubation period and synchronized outbreaks. Our study suggests that the causative agent of KD is more of a preformed toxin or an ecological agent“, the scientists summarized. (No)