Medical Dictionary
Main Entry:
Whipple's disease Variant:
also Whipple disease Function:
noun : a rare malabsorption syndrome that is caused by an actinomycetous fungus(
Tropheryma whippelli) in the mucous membrane of the intestine, that affects primarily the small intestine but becomes more generalized affecting especially the joints, brain, liver, and heart,that is marked by the accumulation of lipid deposits in the intestinal lymphatic tissues, weight loss, joint pain, mental confusion, and generalized lymphadenopathy, and that is diagnosed by thepresence of macrophages in the lamina propria of the small intestine which give a positive reaction to a periodic acid-Schiff test called also
intestinal lipodystrophy Whipple,
George Hoyt (1878–1976), American pathologist. For more than 30 years Whipple served as dean of the Rochester (New York) School of Medicine and Dentistry, an institution which hedeveloped into a medical center of the first rank. He is best known for his studies of the role of dietary iron. He initially conceived the idea of using a liver diet to treat pernicious anemia. Forhis work he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1934. Whipple also did significant research on tuberculosis, pancreatitis, regeneration of plasma protein, chloroform poisoning inanimals, and blackwater fever. He described intestinal lipodystrophy in 1907.
