ELISA: diseases — симптомы, диагностика и лечение

Viral hepatitis B and C are chronic infections that affect the liver and remain asymptomatic for years. This is their main danger: a person feels healthy until cirrhosis or liver cancer develops. However, the situation with their treatment has changed radically over the past decade. Hepatitis C today can be cured in the vast majority of cases with a course of tablets lasting 8-12 weeks. Hepatitis B cannot yet be completely cured, but it can be reliably controlled, and most importantly, there is a vaccine against it.

Giardiasis is an intestinal infection caused by a single-celled parasite that lives in the small intestine. They become infected through water, unwashed food and dirty hands, so the disease is especially common among preschool and primary school children. More myths have accumulated around Giardia than around any other intestinal infection: they are accused of allergies, of “slagging in the liver”, they are treated prophylactically by the whole family and are found “in everyone” in a blood test. The truth is different. Giardia does not live in the liver or gallbladder, but in the small intestine; their presence in the body does not equal disease; and the diagnosis is made by detecting the parasite itself or its antigen in the stool, and a single negative test does not exclude anything.

HIV infection today is a chronic disease that is treated as systematically as diabetes or hypertension. Over the past two decades, the main thing has changed: with timely initiation and regularly taken antiretroviral therapy, the life expectancy of a person with HIV is approaching normal, he works, studies, starts a family and gives birth to healthy children. Another fundamental fact that not everyone knows about: a person in whom the virus is not detected in the blood during treatment does not transmit the infection through sexual contact. This principle is formulated briefly - undetectable equals non-transmitting, or N=N. It has been confirmed by large international studies and accepted by the global medical community. Much of what still frightens people relates not to the infection itself, but to outdated ideas about it: HIV is not transmitted through handshakes, hugs, shared utensils, swimming pools, insect bites and household contacts.

Measles is one of the most contagious infections known to man. If an unvaccinated child is in a room with a patient with measles, the probability of him getting sick is close to nine out of ten, and it is enough just to be in the same entrance or in the corridor of the clinic: the virus stays in the air for up to two hours after the patient leaves. There is a widespread belief that measles is a common childhood illness that is “best dealt with in childhood.” This is a dangerous misconception. Complications occur in approximately every third patient, pneumonia develops in one in twenty, and brain damage occurs in approximately one in a thousand. In addition, the virus weakens immune memory for months and years, which is why a child after measles suffers more often and more severely from other infections. There is no specific medicine against measles - there is only a reliable vaccination.

Brucellosis is an infection that humans contract from animals: cows, sheep, goats and camels. The main routes of transmission are unpasteurized milk and products made from it: homemade cottage cheese, kaymak, fresh cheese, as well as direct contact with animals and their secretions during lambing, milking or cutting up the carcass. For our region, this is not exotic, but a completely relevant disease, especially in rural areas and where dairy products are bought on the market from private traders. It is difficult to identify brucellosis for one reason: it does not give any specific symptoms. Prolonged wave-like temperature, debilitating sweating, weakness and pain in the joints and back fit into dozens of other diagnoses, so the patient often spends months being treated for “unclear fever”, ARVI or radiculitis. Meanwhile, the key to diagnosis almost always lies in one question that is simply not asked: what you ate and what animals you came into contact with.

Syphilis is an infection caused by Treponema pallidum, known for its ability to masquerade as dozens of other diseases. Its insidiousness is that the first manifestations are painless and go away on their own: the ulcer heals without any treatment, the person calms down, and meanwhile the infection spreads throughout the body. At the same time, syphilis is completely curable at any stage - the only question is what consequences will remain by the time treatment begins.