Assessment of Widal agglutination test in non-typhoid fevers

The present work was done as a trial for assessment of the value of Widal test in fevers other than typhoid and paratyphoid and the significance of its positivity during diagnosis of these fevers especially in confusable non classical clinical presentation. One hundred cases were studied; twenty of them were healthy Egyptian individuals. The other eighty cases were: fifteen cases of enteric fevers, twenty five cases of viral hepatitis, fifteen cases of meningococcal meningitis and twenty five cases of bacterial respiratory tract infection, fifteen of them were diagnosed as pulmonary tuberculosis. Widal agglutination test was performed on the 4[th], 7[th] and 14[th] day of illness for every case. It was observed that Widal test may give erroneous information, evidenced by its positivity in a large number of the other diseases to the same extent as its negativity in typhoid cases

use of cholinesterase reactivators as a part of management of tetanus

Tetanus is a common disease of tropical and subtropical countries with high mortality rate, its tetanospasmin inhibits cholinesterase enzyme leading to accumulation of acetyl choline at motor nerve endings. Therefore choline esterase restoring drug chemically designated as obidoxim chloride was added to the classical lines of treatment of tetanus. No mortalities were recorded in cases suffering from moderate type of tetanus after the use of obidoxim chloride while patients who received the classical treatment without the use of choline esterase reactivator had a mortality rate of 37.5%. The mortality rate was reduced from 62.5% to 22.72% in serve cases of tetanus. The period needed for improvement of the clinical manifestations [trismus, muscle rigidity and spasms] was shortened in all cases after adding choline esterase reactivator to the classical line of therapy