Rubella -Its Origination & History
Rubella, or the German measles, as popularly known, is the result of rubella virus. The virus multiplies inside the body, and the effect is seen on the skin. The mortality rate from Rubella virus is not very high, and adults are more prone to the attack of rubella, than anything else. The name "rubella" is derived from Latin, meaning little red. The first possible signs of German measles were seen in mid-eighteenth century, when German physicians began to diagnose the symptoms of the disease. Friedrich Hoffmann was the first person to make the clinical description of rubella in 1740, and which was later successfully acknowledged by de Bergen in 1752 and Orlow in 1758 respectively.
In 1814, George de Maton was the first person to make a clear distinction of rubella from the scarlet fever. All the physicians who made significant and remarkable progress in the identification and distinction of the disease were Germans. Hence, the disease was named as Rötheln (from the German name Röteln), meaning German measles. In the year 1866, Henry Veale, an English Royal Artillery surgeon, made the first non-German reference of the disease while serving in India, and coined it rubella from the Latin word, which meant "Little Red."
Rubella is both acquired as well as congenital in nature. The disease is acquired through the airborne droplet emission from the upper respiratory tract of the infected person. Rubella virus seems to be present in the human urine, feces, and the skin. Rubella has no carrier state, and the virus of the disease simply occurs only in the active cases suffering from the disease. Rubella has an incubation period of around 2-3 weeks, but again, the incubation period differs from person to person.
Rubella was given a formal recognition at the International Congress of Medicine in London, in the year 1881. It was only in the year 1941, that Alfred Fabian Hess did experimentations on monkeys before theorizing his work. He made the final conclusion that rubella was caused due to attack by the virus. Later in the year 1938, Hiro and Tosaka, made a formal confirmation as they used the filtered nasal washings from the infected person to pass on the disease to healthy children. A widespread epidemic happened in the year 1940 in Australia, and during this time, ophthalmologist Norman McAllister Gregg notified 78 cases of congenital cataracts in the infants. It was amazing to find out that 68 of the 78 cases were infected through their mother during the pregnancy.
In the year 1962, Rubella virus was isolated by two groups of physicians and medical researchers, which were led by Parkman and Weller. Between 1962 and 1965m there was pandemic of rubella in Europe, and which later spread to United States. During the years 1964-65, United States had already seen around 12.5million rubella cases. Quite surprisingly, there were 11,000 miscarriages or therapeutic abortions and 20,000 active babies suffering from congenital rubella syndrome. Out of these, around 2,100 died in the neonatal stage; 12,000 were deaf; approximately, 3,580 were deaf; and around 1,800 had mental retardation. In the New York City alone, CRS was the key factor to affect 1% of the new births.
