Hans Einstein talks Valley Fever
Cousin of Albert Einstein shares his expertise with BC students and faculty in the Fireside Room.
Katherine J. White
Issue date: 11/7/07 Section: News
After the incubation period, sufferers experience coughing fits, fevers, chills and chest pains. As the condition worsens, the afflicted individual experiences myalgia, pleural effusion and meningismus.
Einstein showed a slide of a chest X-ray with a cloudy area indicating infection as well as an enlargement of the lymph nodes. Einstein remarked that the progression of the disease resembles tuberculosis.
The chest in the X-ray belonged to a twenty-seven-year-old male who worked in Valley Fever-prone Maricopa at a kitty litter plant who eventually died of the fever. Einstein also showed a slide of a young female in an advanced state of the disease with a large cavity in her lungs. Einstein after that showed a slide of a young black girl's spine completely destroyed by the disease.
During the course of the lecture, Einstein mentioned that African Americans are currently the group most often afflicted with the most serious cases of the disease. More than 7,000 Cocci cases strike the U.S. a year, and yearly treatment costs typically go over $60 million.
According to Einstein, to ascertain if a patient has the disease, skin and serologic tests can be performed as well as histologic studies of biopsy specimens taken from the skin and lungs in cases in which patients are coughing up blood.
Cultures derived from sputum (saliva) pus and body fluids can also be used as a basis for diagnosis, according to Einstein. Skin, bones, joints, knees and the spine are the areas usually infected.
An infection in the brain was usually 100 percent fatal until the 1950s. Einstein said that he has never seen a case of the fever infecting the intestines. According to Einstein, 60 percent of Valley Fever sufferers may think that they only have a mild form of a flu or a cold, and 40 percent become sick enough to need medical care. Five to ten percent are gravely ill patients who often wind up with scars on their lungs. For the seriously afflicted, the symptoms resemble pneumonia. The cases in which the disease traversed from the lungs to the bloodstream to the brain usually ended in death. A prolonged period of moderate discomfort is common in the initial stages of the progression of the disease, according to Einstein.
Einstein showed a slide of a chest X-ray with a cloudy area indicating infection as well as an enlargement of the lymph nodes. Einstein remarked that the progression of the disease resembles tuberculosis.
The chest in the X-ray belonged to a twenty-seven-year-old male who worked in Valley Fever-prone Maricopa at a kitty litter plant who eventually died of the fever. Einstein also showed a slide of a young female in an advanced state of the disease with a large cavity in her lungs. Einstein after that showed a slide of a young black girl's spine completely destroyed by the disease.
During the course of the lecture, Einstein mentioned that African Americans are currently the group most often afflicted with the most serious cases of the disease. More than 7,000 Cocci cases strike the U.S. a year, and yearly treatment costs typically go over $60 million.
According to Einstein, to ascertain if a patient has the disease, skin and serologic tests can be performed as well as histologic studies of biopsy specimens taken from the skin and lungs in cases in which patients are coughing up blood.
Cultures derived from sputum (saliva) pus and body fluids can also be used as a basis for diagnosis, according to Einstein. Skin, bones, joints, knees and the spine are the areas usually infected.
An infection in the brain was usually 100 percent fatal until the 1950s. Einstein said that he has never seen a case of the fever infecting the intestines. According to Einstein, 60 percent of Valley Fever sufferers may think that they only have a mild form of a flu or a cold, and 40 percent become sick enough to need medical care. Five to ten percent are gravely ill patients who often wind up with scars on their lungs. For the seriously afflicted, the symptoms resemble pneumonia. The cases in which the disease traversed from the lungs to the bloodstream to the brain usually ended in death. A prolonged period of moderate discomfort is common in the initial stages of the progression of the disease, according to Einstein.
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