Kawasaki Disease Outbreak in San Diego

There's been a small outbreak of Kawasaki disease in San Diego. Usually a disease of young children, it causes inflammation of blood vessels throughout the body and can be fatal if not treated. Kawasaki's is considered rare. Its cause is unknown.

In San Diego, sixteen children have come down with the disease since the start of 2019.
http://www.cbs8.com/story/39968102/kawasaki-disease-cases-increasing-in-san-diego-county

About five years ago, a paper was published in PNAS which found evidence of a possible link between outbreaks of Kawasaki disease in Japan and high altitude winds carrying unusually high amounts of the fungus candida albicans from a particular agricultural area of China. Ian Lipkin, of Columbia's Center for Infection and Immunity, was one of the authors of that paper.

Dr. Lipkin has mentioned this paper on more than one occasion when speaking about ME/CFS. It could be taken to be just a part of his CV, but I have gotten the impression that he's also pointing out that here is an example of a disease of unknown etiology (like ME) where the cause may turn out to be an unsuspected environmental exposure as opposed to an infection. As with ME, Kawasaki's disease can appear both sporadically and in "outbreaks," as in San Diego.

The PNAS paper inferred an incubation period of 6-48 hours for Kawasaki's in Japan, "thus favoring an antigenic or toxic exposure as the trigger," as opposed to an infection.

San Diego has gotten a fair amount of rain recently, which might promote the growth of fungus, but that rain has arrived via a "high altitude atmospheric river," so named because such narrow, yet powerful systems can transport as much water as the Amazon River.


[I'm not sure if this should go here or in the "Health News and Research Unrelated the ME/CFS" forum.]

 

There are increasingly so many examples of conditions being identified on the fringes of our medical understanding as to render the whole idea of categorically diagnosing some one with a pseudo psychiatric non diagnosis of MUS syndrome both ludicrous and dangerous.