Byssinosis Byssinosis Byssinosis, also called "brown lung disease" or "Monday fever", is an occupational lung disease caused by exposure to cotton dust in inadequately ventilated working environments. Byssinosis commonly occurs in workers who are employed in yarn and fabric manufacture industries. It is now thought that the cotton dust directly causes the disease and some believe that the causative agents are endotoxins that come from the cell walls of gram-negative bacteria that grow on the cotton. Although bacterial endotoxin is a likely cause, the absence of similar symptoms in workers in other industries exposed to endotoxins makes this uncertain. Of the
Whipple's disease dementia, memory loss, confusion, and decreased level of consciousness. Eye movement disturbances and myorhythmia (rapidly repetitive movements of the muscles) of the face, together referred to as "oculomasticatory myorhythmia", are highly characteristic for Whipple's disease. Weakness and poor coordination of part of the body, headaches, seizures, as well as a number of more uncommon neurological features, are present in some cases. "T. whipplei" is one of the actinomycetes, and is a distant relative of "Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare", and "Mycobacterium paratuberculosis" explaining in part why Whipple's disease is similar to the diseases caused by these bacteria. The disease is common in farmers