[The Brill-Zinsser disease still occurs in Croatia: retrospective analysis of 25 hospitalized patients].

The article presents epidemiological, clinical, laboratory and therapeutic characteristics of Brill-Zinsser disease (BZD). A total of 25 cases of BZD were retrospectively analyzed during the period from January 1, 1980 through December 31, 2000, and etiology was confirmed by rickettsial complement-fixation test (CFT). The majority of cases 15 (60%) quoted history of primary attack of epidemic typhus during or after the World War II. During the course of the disease in our patients different organic systems were involved. Aseptic meningitis was verified in 21 (84%) patients, rash in 17 (68%), liver lesion in 14 (56%), pneumonitis in 7 (28%), myopericarditis in 7 (28%) and 5 (20%) had renal lesion. Not a single clinical symptom or finding of disease has a diagnostic particularity. However, long term fever, headache, rash and aseptic meningitis, or information of infestation with lice in childhood, or a history of epidemic typhus should arouse a suspicion of this disease, which still occurs in Croatia.