variola
[vah-ri´o-lah] smallpox. adj., adj vari´olar, vario´lous.
variola mi´nor a mild form of smallpox having a low fatality rate.
small·pox
(smawl'poks), An acute eruptive contagious disease caused by a poxvirus (Orthopoxvirus, a member of the family Poxviridae) and marked at the onset by chills, high fever, backache, and headache. In 2-5 days these constitutional symptoms subside and an eruption appears as papules, which become umbilicated vesicles, develop into pustules, dry, and form scabs that, on falling off, leave a permanent marking of the skin (pock marks). The average incubation period is 8-14 days. As a result of increasingly aggressive vaccination programs carried out over a period of about 200 years, smallpox is now extinct.
[E. small pocks, or pustules]
Smallpox was a universally dreaded scourge for more than 3 millennia, with case fatality rates sometimes exceeding 20%. In many ways a unique disease, it had no nonhuman reservoir species and no asymptomatic human carriers. First subjected to some control by variolation in the 10th century in India and China, it was gradually suppressed in the industrialized world after Edward Jenners 1776 landmark demonstration that infection with the harmless cowpox (vaccinia) virus renders humans immune to the smallpox virus. The last case diagnosed in the U.S. occurred in 1949. A global eradication program was initiated by the World Health Organization in 1966, and the last naturally occurring case of the disease was reported in Somalia in 1977. Routine vaccination against smallpox, discontinued in the 1970s, has been resumed for military and health care personnel and others who would be at high risk if smallpox virus should be used as a weapon of biologic warfare or bioterrorism.
variola
/va·ri·o·la/ (vah-ri´o-lah) smallpox.vari´olarvari´olousvariola
(və-rī′ə-lə, vâr′ē-ō′lə, văr′-)va·ri·o·la
(var-ī'ō-lă) 1. Species type of the genus Orthopoxvirus that causes human smallpox.
2. Smallpox.
[Med. L. dim of L. varius, spotted]
variola
An alternative term for SMALLPOX. va·ri·o·la
(vă-rī'ō-lă) 1. Species type of the genus Orthopoxvirus that causes human smallpox.
2. Smallpox.
[Med. L. dim of L. varius, spotted]
variola (ver´ēō´lə),
n (smallpox), an acute, viral, contagious disease transmitted by the respiratory route and direct contact. The incubation period is 1 to 2 weeks. Manifestations include headache, chills, and temperature up to 106° F. On the third and fourth day, macules appear, which then become papules; then constitutional symptoms abate. On the sixth day the papules become vesicles. The vesicles then become pustules, with desquamation occurring in about 2 weeks. It has been eradicated in the United States due to vaccination.
variola
a viral disease of humans and primates characterized by fever, rash and scab formation. Called also smallpox.
