Yaws is a remarkably common chronic infectious disease that occurs mainly in the warm humid regions of the tropics.
What is yaws?
Yaws is a remarkably common chronic infectious disease that occurs mainly in the warm humid regions of the tropics. Yaws features characteristic bumps on the skin of the face, hands, feet, and genital area. Almost all cases of yaws are in children under 15 years of age.
What causes yaws?
Yaws is caused by a particular bacterium called a spirochete (a spiral-shaped type of bacteria). The bacterium is scientifically referred to as Treponema pertenue. (A different type of spirochete, Treponema pallidum, is the organism responsible for the venereal disease syphilis).
How does yaws begin?
Yaws begins when the spirochete penetrates the skin at a spot where it was scraped, cut, or otherwise compromised. At the entrance site, a painless bump arises within 2-8 weeks and grows. The initial bump is referred to as the mother yaw. The glands in the area of the mother yaw are often swollen (regional lymphadenopathy). When the mother yaw heals, a light-colored scar remains.
What are other developments in the course of yaws?
Patients with yaws develop recurring ("secondary") crops of bumps and more swollen glands. These bumps may be painless like the mother yaw or they may be filled with pus, burst, and ulcerate. The affected child often experiences malaise (feels poorly) and anorexia (loss of appetite).
In its late ("tertiary") stage, yaws can destroy areas of the skin, bones, and joints and deform them. The palms of the hands and soles of the feet tend to become thickened and painful ("dry crab yaws").
How is yaws diagnosed?
Yaws is suspected in any child who has the characteristic clinical features and lives in an area where the disease is common. With increasing travel, a child once in the tropics may carry the disease to a more temperate area of the world.
Laboratory confirmation of the diagnosis is by blood serum tests and special (dark-field) examination under the microscope whereby technicians can actually see the spirochete bacterium.
How is yaws treated?
Treatment of yaws is simple and highly effective. A single shot of penicillin cures the disease. Anyone allergic to penicillin can be treated with another antibiotic, usually erythromycin or tetracycline.
Why is yaws a serious problem?
Yaws is a major public health threat in the tropics. Tropical regions in Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania are all at continuing risk for yaws. A high percentage of children in such areas can be infected. Transmission of the disease is facilitated by overcrowding and poor hygiene, and tends to be more prevalent in poor areas.
Yaws can be completely eradicated from an area by giving penicillin or another appropriate antibiotic to everyone in the population. This may, unfortunately, cost more than a poor country can afford.
Why is this disease called yaws?
The term "yaws" is thought to be of Caribbean origin. In the language of the Carib Indian people, "yaya" was the word for "a sore."
The disease yaws may have come from Africa where the word "yaw" may have meant "a berry." Because the bumps of yaws look like berries, the disease is also called frambesia (or frambesia tropica) from the French "framboise," meaning "raspberry." Other names for yaws include granuloma tropicum polypapilloma tropicum, and thymiosis.
- Yaws is a common disease of children in the tropics.
- Yaws is a chronic relapsing infectious illness.
- Yaws first affects the skin and later the bones and joints as well.
- Yaws is caused by a bacteria, the spirochete Treponema pertenue.
- Transmission is by skin-to-skin contact. The spirochete cannot penetrate normal skin but can enter through a scrape or cut in the skin.
- Yaws is promoted by overcrowding and poor hygiene.
- Yaws can be cured by a single shot of penicillin.
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