My 3 year old son was diagnosed with KD this Sunday and got IVIG and ASS treatment. He reacted good on it and we are now happy that he is getting better. I pray that he will not develop any serious cardiac issues in the upcoming weeks. The doctors are very competent and we are lucky that KD was found in an early stage.
My wife and me are now taking care of my Son while he is in hospital. To also get away from hospital and free the mind we have now kind of shifts. But I cannot keep my mind away from it. Since Sunday I was reading a lot of articles related to KD while . I am still thinking what was going on in the days and weeks before the disease was breaking out to find some root-cause. I know that since 50 years a lot of experts were investigating the reasons without success. A lot of theories are postulated but still nobody knows what triggers KD.
What kept me thinking was the high rate in Japan and other asian countries. I always want to know the reason, so I followed this trace and I was remembering that Wednesday, the day before the fever began, I was shopping in a nearby supermarket with my Son and he picked Shiitake mushrooms. I thought: "Why not, we never had them before!". So we bought them and together with my son I prepared them for diner. He didn't like the taste, so he did not eat them. But he had skin contact and was breathing their spores.
Once the link was made in my mind I checked some other information. I have to add that I am not a paranoid person and stick to the facts.
- Shiitake is cultivated in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Since mid of the 1980s China is also a big player in production. Those are exactly the countries were KD is seen most.
- Shiitake is nowadays also cultivated in the US and Canada, were the numbers of KD are also slightly higher
- Shiitake is known to cause allergic reactions on adults https://www.dermnetnz.org/topics/shiita ... dermatitis and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4371686/
- It is used as medicine but also has some side effects: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... Activities
- It could also be shown that in non-asian countries such as the US there is a higher risk of KD for people of asian ethnicity. This might not be due to genetic reasons but to cultural and culinary reasons
- I tried to compare the Shiitake comsumption to the KD outbreak statistics, but I could not find free available data. The only suspicious thing I found was a higher increase from 1994 to 1995 in both graphs for Japan. I am still trying to link the Japanese epidemic outbreaks in 1982 and 1986 but there are not sufficient data to verify or falsify my theory
Can you somehow verify or falsify my theory?
Enough of writing hypothetical ideas, my son needs me and I need him. I will now drive to the hospital to laugh and play with him.
- A concerned father.