Patient reported long-term outcomes of Puumala virus infection in northern Sweden

Project description

Puumala virus infection or Nephropathia epidemica, also called vole fever after the animal that spread the disease, is a common disease in northern Sweden. Västerbotten County has the highest incidence of the disease in Sweden; in the last major epidemic in 2007 the incidence was 313 per 100.000 persons. Vole fever is a mild form of haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome and the severity of the acute disease ranges from mild to life-threatening disease, though the mortality is low. The disease is self-limiting and there is no causative treatment. Several other infectious diseases such as Epstein Barr Virus, Dengue, Chikungunya and Giardia-infections are known to cause long-term post-infectious fatigue. We wanted to investigate if there is a post-infectious fatigue syndrome or other long-term symptoms associated with vole fever.

We invited all patients diagnosed with vole fever in the counties of Västerbotten and Norrbotten between January 2007 and September 2010, a total of 1719 persons aged 18 to 93 years. We also invited a comparison group from the general population, matched by age, sex and place of residence. All participants received a questionnaire with a total of 147 questions about demographical data, occupation, exercise, smoking habits, vole fever and chronic diseases, etcetera. We used internationally validated questionnaires to assess general health _SF36v2, fatigue - FSS, sleep quality – PSQI, and pain – BPI.
66% (1132) of the patients and 53% (915) from the comparison group participated, giving an overall response rate of 60%, 2047 out of 3438 invited. Data is being analyzed.