Q fever

Q fever is an acute rickettsial disease that is characterized by common toxic symptoms, fever and often atypical pneumonia. The agent is a microorganism that is resistant to drying, heating and ultraviolet irradiation. Wild and domestic animals, acarians are the reservoir and source of infection. People get infected when they are in contact with them, eating dairy products and via airborne.  The disease is revealed during the whole year, but more often in spring and summer. Q fever is widely spread around the world and hot spots are located on 5 continents.

Symptoms and course
Incubation period is 14-19 days. The disease starts abruptly with shiver. Temperature rises up to 38-39 C and keeps 3-5 days. The disease is characterized with variances in temperature, followed by shiver and sweating. The most common symptoms are those of intoxication (headache, muscule pain, joint pains, sickliness of eyeballs, loss of appetite). Facial skin is moderately hyperemic, rash occurs rarely. On 3-5 day of the disease some patients can have painful dry cough. Pneumonic affection is clearly detected during X-ray examination in form of local boundary rounds. Then appear typical symptoms of pneumonia. The tongue is dry. Also there is noticed liver and spleen increase (in 50% of cases). There are no changes in urine. The recovery from the disease lasts slowly. Apathy, subfebrile temperature and work decrement are kept for a long time. Recurrence occurs in 4-20% cases of disease.

Treatment
Diseased should take antibiotics such as 0,2-0,3g tetracycline or 0.5g chloramphenicol every 6 hours for 8-10 days. In parallel is prescribed intravenous injection of 5% glucose solution, vitamin complex, for cause – oxygen-therapy, blood transfusion, heart-vascular remedies.

Preventive Measures
Domestic animals should be tested for Q fever. Cattle house should be disinfected with 10% of lime chloride solution. Milk from diseased animals should be heated. In hot spots is recommended to fight  acarians and to use repellents. Those who contact with animals should be vaccinated to prevent Q fever. Diseased with Q fever do not present danger for people.