Given the name by the physician who discovered it more than a hundred years ago, the Whipple’s disease is a product of the Tropheryma Whipplie bacteria. George Hoyt Whipple, who also won the Nobel Prize in the field of medicine or physiology, discovered the Whipple’s disease in the annum of 1907 after diagnosing the gastrointestinal disorder. The Whipple’s disease is a rare infection that usually focuses on the intestines causing malabsorbtion but it can also effect other parts of the body including the eyes, brain, lungs, joints and heart.
The Whipple’s disease is known to effect more men than female as a study shows that up to eighty-seven percent of those suffering from the Whipple’s disease are males while the remaining thirteen percent of infections are attributed to females. The most common of the symptoms of the Whipple’s disease include diarrhea, arthritis, joint pains or weight loss though it is not always the case that a patient would show these symptoms and it has been calculated that roughly fifteen percent of those suffering from this disease do not exhibit these common symptoms.
The Whipple’s disease can be detected through a biopsy of the intestines which picks up the Tropheryma Whipplie bacteria as being Periodic Acid-Schiff (PAS) positive inclusions. The other symptoms of the Whipple’s disease may include rashes on the skin, fever and adenopathy which is the inflammation of the lymph nodes. The Whipple’s disease can be treated once it is detected by antibiotics though if it is left untreated it can cause death.
Whipple's Disease
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