Scrub typhus: A fever found in hilly regions spreads to plains

After malaria, dengue and swine flu, now the residents of the tricity also need to watch out for scrub typhus, warn doctors. A fever known to only spread in the hill regions has now started spreading to the plains as well owing to various climatic reasons. The scrub typhus patients earlier only found in hilly regions of the Himalayas including Shimla, Assam, West Bengal are now reporting at PGI from Chandigarh, Panchkula and the surrounding areas.

"This year in August and September, 62 blood samples were received from adults as well as children in PGI. Out of these, 50 were found positive for scrub typhus by Weil Felix assay," says Dr Sunil Sethi, Department of Medical Microbiology, PGIMER.

Most of the patients had fever, cough and myalgia, he adds.

Says Dr Rajesh Kumarm, head of the Department of Community Medicine, PGIMER, "There can be various reasons for the disease to spread here in plains. First, there are climatic changes. Secondly, the agricultural practices in Punjab and Haryana have also changed and the habitat may have been conducive for the mite to breed here and thus find a favourable habitat. Also, residents keep migrating from one place to another and someone infected with the disease came here in contact of the mite here and then the infection spread from one mite to another. Indeed it is an unusual finding in the past few years."

The disease recently took lives of 14 patients from different regions in Himachal Pradesh, says Dr Ramesh, deputy medical superintendent, Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital, Shimla. "At present, we have 30 patients admitted to the hospital, and on average, we had been receiving over 100 cases a day from various districts of Himachal Pradesh in our hospital in the past couple of days," he adds.

Explaining its health complications, Dr Sethi says severe scrub typhus usually presents as multiple-organ damage including carditis, acute respiratory distress syndrome hepatitis renal failure encephalitis, disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (DIC) and septic shock.

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