Kawasaki disease

Kawasaki disease (KD) was first reported in 1967 by T. Kawasaki , a Japanese pediatrician.1 The first Korean KD patient was reported in 1973.2 Since then, the incidence of this disease has increased continuously. KD is characterized with acute systemic vasculitis that occurs predominantly in children between 6 months to 5 years of age. Although the clinical symptoms of KD are well characterized, the causes of this disease are not yet known. For this reason, KD is usually diagnosed by clinical symptoms, such as a fever for 5 days or more, bilateral nonpurulent conjunctival congestion, changes of the lips and oral mucosa, polymorphous exanthema along the trunk, changes of the peripheral extremities and subsequent desquamation of finger tips, and nonpurulent cervical lymphadenopathy over 1.5 cm in size ^[1]