Acute rheumatic fever in Jamaican children - abstract

This presentation summarizes experience with rheumatic fever as seen at the Children's Hospital over a 4-year period. There were 115 admissions for rheumatic fever accounting for 1 percent of medical admissions over this period. All cases except a small minority were from the lower socio-economic group of the population. There was a wide age ditribution but 56 percent of the first attacks were in the age group 7-10 years. The most frequent presenting features were polyarthritis in 56 percent and carditis 51 percent. Chorea was present in 9.2 percent of the attacks. There was laboratory evidence of previous streptococcal infection in 90 percent of cases with carditis there was mitral valve involvement always present with heart failure in 50 percent of cases. The aortic valve was involved in 27 percent of attacks. Up to the time of follow-up, 6 percent had died from heart failure and there was evidence of residual valve lesions in 27 percent. There was a 19 percent recurrence rate which was usually associated with faulty prophyaxis. These figures illustrate that rheumatic fever is a serious medical problems in Jamaica with considerable mortality and morbidity (AU)

The effect of iron and protein supplementations on the haemoglobin level of healthy female students

The possible existence of anaemia has been studied in a group of 84 healthy female West Indian students, all resident in the University College of the West Indies. Three blood specimens were taken at two week intervals and the effect of milk and ferrous gluconate supplementations on the haemoglobin level were studied. It is concluded that in this group as a whole there is statistically proven evidence of iron deficiency and very likely also evidence for protein deficiency. The possible explanations of these findings are discussed (AU)