RT Book, Section
A1 Marshall, Beth C.
A1 Koch, William C.
A2 Shah, Samir S.
A2 Kemper, Alex R.
A2 Ratner, Adam J.
SR Print(0)
ID 1157324115
T1 Mononucleosis Syndromes
T2 Pediatric Infectious Diseases: Essentials for Practice, 2e
YR 2019
FD 2019
PB McGraw-Hill Education
PP New York, NY
SN 9781259861536
LK accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1157324115
RD 2024/04/20
AB Infectious  mononucleosis  is  a  clinical  syndrome  classically  defined  by  the  presence  of  fever,  lymphadenopathy,  pharyngitis,  and  fatigue.  The  illness  was  first  recognized  in  the  late  nineteenth  century  and  termed  “glandular  fever”  or  “Drusenfieber”  by  German  physicians  who  noted  its  frequent  occurrence  in  the  context  of  family  outbreaks.1,2  In  a  1920  Johns  Hopkins  Medical  Bulletin,  Sprunt  and  Evans3  described  six  previously  healthy  young  adults  with  a  febrile  illness  similar  to  glandular  fever  and  noted  the  presence  of  atypical  lymphocytes  in  the  peripheral  blood  smear.  Because  of  the  predominance  of  these  unusual  mononuclear  cells,  they  termed  the  syndrome  “infectious  mononucleosis.”  Twelve  years  later  while  investigating  rheumatic  disease,  Paul  and  Bunnell4  serendipitously  noted  that  the  serum  of  patients  with  symptoms  of  infectious  mononucleosis  contained  high  titers  of  antibodies  that  agglutinated  sheep  red  blood  cells;  thus  the  detection  of  these  “heterophile  antibodies”  became  the  first  laboratory  marker  available  to  diagnose  the  illness.  The  association  of  Epstein–Barr  virus  (EBV)  with  infectious  mononucleosis  followed  in  the  late  1960s,  when  a  laboratory  technician  working  with  specimens  from  patients  with  Burkitt’s  lymphoma,  a  condition  that  had  recently  been  shown  to  be  associated  with  EBV,  accidentally  became  infected  and  developed  clinical  infectious  mononucleosis.5,6