Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Symptoms and Signs

Once the virus enters the body, there is an incubation period when the virus multiplies to a level high enough to cause infection. This is followed by a prodromal phase of fatigue, malaise and body and muscle aches that may lead to the onset of fever. The fever may be low grade or high grade and remittent. Inflammation of the pharynx, a running nose, nasal congestion, headache, redness of the eyes, cough, muscle and joint pains and a skin rash could be present.

The fatigue and body pain could be disproportionate to the level of fever, and lymph glands may swell up. The illness is usually self-limited but the fatigue and cough may persist for a few weeks. Sometimes pneumonia, vomiting and diarrhoea, jaundice or arthritis (joint swelling) may complicate the initial viral fever. Some viral fevers are spread by insects, for example, arbovirus, can cause a bleeding tendency, which results in bleeding from the skin and several other internal organs and can be fatal.

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