Pogosta disease

Pogosta disease is a viral disease also known as Karelian fever. The causative agent of this disease is Sindbis virus, a positive-stranded RNA virus belonging to the Alphavirus genus and family Togaviridae.

This disease is mainly found in the Eastern parts of Finland; a typical Pogosta disease patient is a middle-aged person who has been infected through a mosquito bite while picking berries in the autumn. The prevalence of the disease is about 100 diagnosed cases every year.

The symptoms of the disease include usually mild fever and other flu-like symptoms; in most cases the symptoms last less than 5 days. However, in some cases, the patients develop a painful arthritis. Because of the extremely low prevalence of the disease, no chemical agents exist that can be used to treat the disease.