Variola - Causes, Symptoms and Treatment

Definition

Variola is also known as small pox. It is an acute infectious disease caused by a virus named Variola major and Variola minor. No one has naturally contracted smallpox since 1977. Smallpox was declared eradicated from the earth in 1980. Smallpox is a serious, contagious, and sometimes fatal infectious disease. There is no specific treatment for smallpox disease, and the only prevention is vaccination. The significant clinical features include a three-day prodromal illness characterized by fever, headache, backache, and vomiting. A generalized vesicular or pustular eruption in the absence of a severe febrile prodrome is unlikely to be smallpox. At this stage, the person is almost always very sick and not able to move around in the community. The infected person is contagious until the last smallpox scab falls off. Smallpox is most often spread by the respiratory secretions of people with smallpox to people who have closed approximately less than six feet face to face contact.

Causes

1. Smallpox, one of the biggest killers in history, is caused by a virus called variola. Variola causes a distinctive rash and is often lethal.
2. Smallpox virus is that it only infects humans and not animals and insects. So, this cannot be caused by pets like cat or dog.
3. It is highly contagious. The person can be caused by this disease in a mere contact or just breathing. It can spread in family and then society sharply.
4. It is considered likely that secret stockpiles of smallpox virus exist outside of the official WHO repositories, and the extent and locations of these stockpiles are unknown.

Symptoms

1. The first symptoms of smallpox were fever and chills, muscle aches, and a flat, reddish-purple rash on the chest, abdomen, and back.
2. These symptoms lasted for about three days. Then the rash faded and the fever dropped.
3. Death from smallpox was usually caused by complications. For example, bacteria could easily get into the open skin lesions. Pneumonia, bone infections, or other diseases would result.
4. This entire process takes three to four weeks, and the areas affected by the rash can be permanently scarred.
5. Rarely, the disease has lesions that develop more slowly, never raised above the surface of the skin, and feels soft to the touch.
6. Generally, direct and fairly prolonged face-to-face contact is required to spread smallpox from one person to another.
7. A person with smallpox is sometimes contagious with onset of fever but the person becomes most contagious with the onset of rash. At this stage the infected person is usually very sick and not able to move around in the community.

Treatment

1. No cure for smallpox was ever found. The best that could be done was to keep a patient comfortable and wait for the disease to die off on its own.
2. The patient should be kept away from all normal people. The caring person should keep all the necessary cares to prevent himself or herself from this disease. A high degree care is needed.