BACKGROUND The most recent epidemiologic features of Kawasaki disease (KD) are unknown. METHODS The 20th nationwide survey of KD was conducted in 2009, and included patients treated for the disease in 2007 and 2008. Hospitals specializing in pediatrics, and hospitals with pediatric departments and 100 or more beds, were asked to report all patients with KD during the 2 survey years. RESULTS...

Kawasaki disease (KD) is an acute febrile illness that is the predominant cause of pediatric acquired heart disease in infants and young children. Because the diagnosis of KD depends on clinical manifestations, incomplete cases are difficult to diagnose, especially in infants younger than 1 year. Incomplete clinical manifestations in infants are related with the development of KD-associated cor...

Kawasaki disease is a disease of unknown etiology that most frequently affects infants and children under 5 years of age. Inflammation occurs in medium-sized muscular arteries throughout the body including the coronary artery, being classified as a systemic vasculitis syndrome. Histopathological investigations of Kawasaki disease have mainly focused on the coronary artery because it is directly...

PURPOSE Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) is the standard treatment for Kawasaki disease (KD). However, there is still no standard treatment for IVIG-resistant KD. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of low-dose methotrexate (MTX) as a treatment for IVIG-resistant KD. MATERIALS AND METHODS We retrospectively analyzed 10-year data for patients with IVIG-resistant KD who were administered...

Kawasaki disease (KD) is one of the most common childhood vasculitides and may lead to coronary arterial complications. KD has been reported in more than 60 countries over five continents. Previous publications have provided a comprehensive description of the epidemiologic features of KD including incidence, age of onset, seasonal trends, and rates of cardiac lesions. However, the interactions ...

The average age of infection is expected to vary during seasonal epidemics in a way that is predictable from the epidemiological features, such as the duration of infectiousness and the nature of population mixing. However, it is not known whether such changes can be detected and verified using routinely collected data. We examined the correlation between the weekly number and average age of ca...

Panot Tangsucharit, Shingo Takatori, Pengyuan Sun, Yoshito Zamami, Mitsuhiro Goda, Poungrat Pakdeechote, Fusako Takayama, and Hiromu Kawasaki Department of Clinical Pharmaceutical Sciences, Department of Pharmaceutical Care and Health Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Okayama University, Japan; Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Scie...

BACKGROUND Kawasaki disease (KD) is a common cause of acquired paediatric heart disease in developed countries. KD was first identified in the 1960s in Japan, and has been steadily increasing since it was first reported. The aetiology of KD has not been defined, but is assumed to be infection-related. The present study sought to identify the factor(s) that mediate the geographical variation and...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES We sought to determine whether high-dose aspirin is necessary for the acute therapy of Kawasaki disease (KD) in the intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) era. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Two groups of KD patients treated during the different periods were included. Study group (n=51, treated with IVIG without concomitant use of aspirin in the acute phase) was compared with contr...

Kawasaki disease (KD) is an acute systemic vasculitis that occurs primarily in children and rarely in adults, possibly after bacterial or viral infections in genetically susceptible hosts. KD may frequently be undiagnosed especially in adult patients without the presence of all the classical clinical criteria (incomplete or atypical KD). In addition, many differential diagnoses could be conside...