A clinico-pathological study of yellow fever with demonstration of the virus in the human liver

ABSTRACT

The clinical histopathological and serological findings in three patients who developed yellow fever after entering the Guayaguayare forest in south-east Trinidad in January and February 1979 are described in this report. The patients were all previously healthy young males and the clinical features of the disease varied from fulminant viral hepatitis with hepato-renal failure to a self-limiting anicteric viral illness. The first patient died, and histopathological examination of the liver was done post-mortem. Needle biopsy of the liver was done on case 2 which presented with the clinical picture of infective hepatitis, and on case 3 with the features of an anicteric viral illness. The histopathological hallmarks of midzonal necrosis, granular eosinophilic degeneration (Councilman bodies) and fatty change in the parenchymal cells of the liver were seen in three cases. The electron microscopic study demonstrated the presence of the yellow fever virus in the liver of the patient who died (AU)