Typically, Reye's syndrome begins after a viral infection, such as a cold, influenza, or chickenpox. Most such infections do not lead to Reye's syndrome, and some cases are so mild that no one notices. Other cases are more serious.
Although
adults and babies
can develop Reye's syndrome, it usually occurs in children between the ages of 2 and 16.
Symptoms include vomiting, nausea, and drowsiness. There is also a change in behavior, and patients may act irrationally and seem to have lost touch with reality. If untreated, Reye's syndrome can cause loss of consciousness, coma, and death.
Reye's syndrome causes the brain and liver to swell and the liver to develop fatty deposits. The chemistry of the blood and other body fluids becomes abnormal.
No one is sure how some viral infections develop into Reye's syndrome. Some doctors suspect that an unidentified virus causes Reye's syndrome. Others theorize that people with certain genes * are more likely to get it. Some studies in the 1980s linked aspirin to the development of Reye's syndrome (see sidebar).
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Reye's Syndrome warning on aspirin box.
© Leonard Lessin, Peter Arnold, Inc.
HISTORY OF REYE SYNDROME
The children always arrived at the Australian hospital on the verge of death. They often would be unconscious or in a coma. Sometimes their bodies suffered uncontrollable spasms, and the children seemed to be slipping into insanity.
It was a tragic—and puzzling—situation. Only a week or so earlier, the children had been experiencing the typical childhood infections such as earaches, chest colds, or sore throats. Then things took a turn for the worse.
Dr. Douglas Reye was the director of pathology at that Australian hospital when these children died in the 1950s and early 1960s. He discovered odd things, such as
swollen brains, discolored livers, and damaged kidneys in the children. He realized that they were dealing with an as yet unnamed disease.
In 1963, a doctor in North Carolina named George Johnson saw a link between the disease Reye had discovered and one he was seeing in children after an outbreak of influenza. The disease was initially called Reye-Johnson syndrome and is now simply Reye's syndrome.
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