Duration
The rash exists only over a few, usually 3, days. However, the feeling of illness usually begins a week before and can continue for a few weeks afterwards. Especially adults show an increasing course of the disease, with complications such as joint pain.
Diagnosis
A differentiation from other childhood diseases with rashes like measles, rubella or scarlet fever is often not easy. Nevertheless, the diagnosis is usually made clinically and requires further diagnostic steps only in special cases. Direct detection of the pathogen, for example from the pharyngeal secretion, is not part of the standard procedure, as it would not have any therapeutic consequences.
If, on the other hand, one wants to play it safe with pregnant women or newborns, an antibody determination is carried out in the blood. Since this result can often appear false positive, there is also a haemagglutination test to confirm the result, in which a clumping of red blood cells occurs. Other detection methods include cultural cultivation, PCR (which detects the genetic material of the virus) of the amniotic fluid or a sample taken from the placental villi.
Treatment
Since rubella is a virus, a purely symptomatic treatment is possible, as with most viral diseases. In contrast to a bacterial infection, antibiotics are not effective here. The symptomatic therapy is based on antipyretic agents such as ibuprofen or paracetamol.
These relieve at the same time also occurring limb or headaches. A sufficient fluid intake is also important. If pregnant women have had contact with rubella-infected persons, passive immunization with immunoglobulins is possible within three days after initial contact.
However, an infection cannot be 100% prevented. If the infection occurred during pregnancy, the complications of Rubella embryofetopathy must be treated. In addition to intensive care, the children may require heart or eye surgery after birth, as the rubella virus can lead to malformations of these organs in the unborn child.
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