Still disease

This is a rarely seen syndrome, mostly seen in children. Its characteristics: acute onset, continuous or remittance fever; repeatedly skin rash, wandering athralgia and enlargement of lymph nodes, hepatosplenomegaly, leukocytosis and shift to left, increase of ESR, negative in blood culture, antibiotic terapy is not effective, corticosteroids can suppress those symptoms. The modern medicine not yet completely explore this disease, most patients have the infection history, especially streptococcus and staphylococcus infection; but due to negative blood culture, some thought it might concern with the infectious abnormal allergical reaction. The diagnosis is based on clinical signs, this disease does not have specific diagnosis method, therefore, confirmation of diagnosis is done after elimination of other possibilities. This sickness must be distinguishes from septicaemia, rheumatic fever, lymphoma, systematic lupus erythematosus (SLE), dermatomyositis, rheumatic arthritis, juvenile rheumatism arthritis and so on. The modern medicine mainly uses the steroid anti- inflammation medicine and the non- steroid anti- inflammatory medicine in treatment; in recent years, some people even applied cytotoxic drugs in treatment, but the results are not satisfied. The traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) categorized this sickness as wen bing (warm illness), the main sign is fever with appearance of symptoms; emotional unstable, thirst and rashes appear during fever, redness of tongue, small pulse; the pathological energy is wandering around Qi (energy) base, or both energy formed two obvious wave . Secondly, some thought that this disease is supposed to classify as bi zheng (rheumatism) and li jie feng (strong wind in joint), so it combines the pathological changes in joint, wandering characteristic and edematous, thus evil cold as the main sign and divided into pain in cold and pain in moist. The pathogenesis is internal shutting of cold dampness invading muscle and bones, stagnant of jing mai (route) with isolation of Yang externally and Yin internally, resulting in transformation of heat and injuring the Yin and cause this disease. The clinical presentations are not constant, often locates at qi base in hot weather, then resulted in weakness of Qi and Yin after decrease of heat; therefore, one must eliminates evil and adjust of Yin and Yang in treatment. [Clinical treatment result] Treated 120 cases, average age of patients is 25 years-old, 116 cases of female patients. Fully recovered 117 cases, 3 cases became better. Average duration of fever reduced 13 days, skin rash diminished averagely 8 days.