Leptospirosis en la población de la Región Huetar Norte durante el periodo comprendido entre 1997 y 2000

aim and objectives: to determine the epidemiological behavior of leptospirosis among the population of the northern region (región huetar norte) of costa rica, during the 4 year period comprised between 1997 to 2000 according to biomedical data issued by the regional headquarters of the ministry of health and the local hospital. methods: a list of cases with positive serology for leptospirosis seen in the northern region from 1997 to the year 2000, was supplied by the inciensa database. their medical records were obtained from the office of biostatistics of the san carlos hospital. the information was collected in a previously designed form. the results were analyzed with the statistical package for the social sciences (spss). results: 58 patients had positive serology for leptospirosis. among them the male gender predominated in a 13:1 ratio. young adults (ages from 15 to 30 years) were more frequently affected. most of the people diagnosed with leptospirosis were natives of san carlos. more than one third of the patients were engaged in agriculture or cattle handling. the serotypes more frequently detected were pomona followed by sejroe, tarassovi and hebdomadis. the symptoms were fever, headaches, myalgia and bleeding. laboratory findings renal and hepatic function tests abnormalities, thrombocytopenia and increased cpk were. conclusions: risk factors were present in almost all of the patients. occupational factors predominated. leucopoenia was 3 times more frequent than leucocytosis. this fact would lead us to state that there is a clinical behavior of leptospirosis that differs from what is described in the literature