Made by DATEXIS (Data Science and Text-based Information Systems) at Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin
Deep Learning Technology: Sebastian Arnold, Betty van Aken, Paul Grundmann, Felix A. Gers and Alexander Löser. Learning Contextualized Document Representations for Healthcare Answer Retrieval. The Web Conference 2020 (WWW'20)
Funded by The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy; Grant: 01MD19013D, Smart-MD Project, Digital Technologies
Acrodynia is a condition of pain and dusky pink discoloration in the hands and feet most often seen in children chronically exposed to heavy metals, especially mercury.
The word "acrodynia" is derived from the Greek, where ακρος means "end" or "" and οδυνη means pain. As such, it might be (erroneously) used to indicate that a patient has pain in the hands or feet. However, acrodynia is a disease rather than a symptom. The condition is known by a large number of other names including pink disease, hydrargyria, mercurialism, erythredema, erythredema polyneuropathy, Bilderbeck's, Selter's, Swift's and Swift-Feer disease.
Mercury compounds like calomel were historically used for various medical purposes: as laxatives, diuretics, antiseptics or antimicrobial drugs for syphilis, typhus and yellow fever
. Teething powders were a widespread source of mercury poisoning until the recognition of mercury toxicity in the 1940s.
However, mercury poisoning and acrodynia still exist today. Modern sources of mercury intoxication include broken thermometers.