Beriberi (Q39914): Difference between revisions

The clinical picture of Beriberi is usually divided into a dry (neuritic) type and a wet (cardiac) type. The disease is wet or dry depending on the amount of fluid which accumulates in the body due to factors like cardiac function, kidney lesions and others; even though the exact cause for this oedema has never been successfully explained. Many cases of thiamine deficiency show a mixture of the two main features and are more properly termed thiamine deficiency with cardiopathy and peripheral neuropathy. The infant shows signs of cyanosis and an acute cardiac attack can follow with the infant usually dying within 2 to 4 hours. The common age for this form of the deficiency disease is one month up through the third month. This type of deficiency responds very dramatically to thiamine.