Bornholm's Disease

	When I lived in Bermuda a decade ago I was diagnosed with something called Bornholm's Disease. It is sometimes known as the Devils Grip. Ever heard of it? Certainly I hadn't - it seemed like nobody had ever heard of it! Indeed it seemed like my Doctor was the only person in the whole world who had diagnosed anybody with it and of course it had to be me.
	I suffered through about two weeks of extreme chest pain without treatment because my Doctor didn't know of any. I had a call from a disease control agency a couple of months later recommending, after the fact, that I should have stayed away from pregnant women! That is the sum total of information I had about something that felt as painful as a unanesthetized root-canal every time I took a breath. Thankfully those symptoms passed and I've been fine since but the experience left me with a nagging fear that it might reoccur someday or that the episode may have damaged me in some way. It certainly felt like their was major destruction going on inside me! When I got my first internet account in 1995 (when the new 14,400 bps modems were all the rage) I did hours and hours of searching on the internet trying to learn more about the disease. All I could learn at that time was a viral disease named after the Danish island of Bornholm where there was an outbreak a long time ago. I put it out of my mind thinking I might never learn any more. As I started writing DesignStop.Com's "Idea" page called Think Disease ... I decided I do another search for Bornholm's Disease. So now in 1999 I did a quick search and in short order I was able to find that what I had was a viral disease called pleurodynia caused by a Coxsackie B (Picornavirus: Enterovirus) virus.
	"Epidemic Pleurodynia (Bornholm Disease) An acute infectious febrile disorder caused by a group B coxsackievirus and characterized by severe epigastric or thoracic pain. Epidemic pleurodynia may occur at any age but is most common in children. There is sudden onset of severe, frequently intermittent, often pleuritic pain in the epigastrium or lower anterior chest, with fever and often headache, sore throat, and malaise. Local tenderness, hyperesthesia, muscle swelling, and myalgias of the trunk and extremities may occur. The disease usually subsides in 2 to 4 days, but relapse may occur within a few days and symptoms may continue or recur for several weeks. Up to 5% of cases are complicated by aseptic meningitis, orchitis, and, less commonly, fibrinous pleuritis and pericarditis. Diagnosis is obvious during an epidemic. However, in sporadic cases or in the early stages of an epidemic, the disease may be mistaken for spontaneous pneumothorax, acute appendicitis, pancreatitis, costochondritis, a perforated viscus, an influenza-like respiratory infection, or MI. Laboratory diagnosis consists of demonstrating a rise in specific neutralizing antibody titers or isolating the virus on a throat or stool culture. Prognosis is good in uncomplicated cases, although a few deaths have been reported. Repeated infections with another of the group B coxsackieviruses is possible. Treatment is symptomatic." The source for the above quote is the online version of the seventeenth edition of The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. The online version is searchable. The manual is a desk reference intended for doctors. Of course you may find it useful too. The online manual is a fine service of Merck & Co. the big pharmaceutical company. They have a number of useful resources at their site. You can safely buy the home edition, the doctor's edition or even a cd-rom version of the home edition from amazon.com at their discounted prices. I'm sure I'll learn alot more when I take the time. I did find a picture of the virus here. Also I learned a little about Bornholm, the island. It sounds really nice. Next time I go to Denmark I'll be sure to visit the island. No doubt I'll be able to find information on the history of "their" disease. If you know anything about the disease or the island please . I'd really appreciate hearing from you.
	PS. Here's a search tip that can save you many hours: Use Hotbot's SuperSearch. It straightforwardly allows you to enter multiple keywords with various priorities. The best feature is that it will look for exact phrases. i.e.: searching for "open heart surgery" doesn't return with pages that just have the words open, heart, and surgery somewhere on the page - it will return only pages that use the words together. You can even search for multiple exact phrases.