R. F.

The U.S. is being sternly reminded this week--National Heart Week--that medicine is making little headway against public enemy No. i: heart disease. Though heart disease, as obituary columns remind readers every day, is now the biggest killer (nearly 600,000 deaths a year), it gets scant research attention. Even more shocking, says the American Heart Association, is the nation's neglect of the treatable disease known as rheumatic fever.

Rheumatic fever not only kills more U.S. children each year than almost all other diseases combined: it accounts for 40% of all heart trouble.

Launching . "the most comprehensive assault on heart disease ever waged by this country," the A. H. A. is concentrating its heaviest publicity fire on rheumatic fever. Some facts: P: At least 1,000,000 U.S. citizens suffer from R.F. and its sequel, rheumatic heart disease.

P: Of those who get the disease, a fifth die within ten years, another fifth are crippled for life.

P: Though primarily a children's disease (ages 6 to 14), R.F. attacked 40,000 G.I.s during World War II.

Heart specialists have found rheumatic fever a complicated, baffling disease. Though it is usually preceded by a streptococcus infection (e.g., a "strep" throat, scarlet fever), researchers have not been able to establish the connection between the germ (hemolytic streptococcus) and R.F. It seems to thrive best in crowded slums, but it is not unusually prevalent among Negroes. It is chronically high in sparsely settled Colorado.

Rheumatic fever is hard to diagnose. Its symptoms--fever, aching joints ("growing pains"), nosebleeds, loss of appetite and weight, twitching resembling St. Vitus' dance--are easily confused with the symptoms of grippe and other ailments. Patients may recover from an attack without permanent damage, often without knowing they were really sick. But unless the patient gets skillful treatment, R.F. may .recur.

The most effective treatment is complete rest. But doctors frown on the old idea that an R.F. patient must be treated as a permanent invalid.

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