Over six weeks this spring, 23 children were admitted to a Tennessee hospital for treatment of parechovirus, a common virus that in rare cases can pose a lethal threat to infants, according to a report released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Disease Prevention. .
Twenty-one of the children have recovered without complications, but one was at risk for hearing loss and blood clots, the CDC said, while another child experienced persistent seizures and was expected to have a severe developmental delay.
The children admitted to the Nashville hospital, Children’s Hospital Monroe Carell Jr. from Vanderbilt University, were between 5 days and 3 months old, and their illnesses were detected from April 12 to May 24, the CDC said. The report described the infections as an “unusually large cluster”. Six more cases have been identified at the hospital at other times this year, a “peak of infections” compared to recent years, the report said.
Thirteen of the patients were girls and 10 were boys, and all of them were previously healthy, the CDC said.
Shortly after that cluster, the CDC alerted doctors this month that the type of parechovirus most associated with serious illness had been circulating nationally since May. He suggested parechovirus as a diagnosis to consider for infants with unexplained fever or seizures.
Parechovirus is so common that most children have been infected with it by the time they reach kindergarten age, and its symptoms include the runny nose and sneezing we normally associate with the common cold.
But babies younger than 3 months, and particularly those less than a month old, are at greater risk of serious illness, according to the CDC.
There is no cure for parechovirus, but diagnoses can still guide how doctors manage the disease.
Experts say it’s possible that the increase in cases stems from increased socialization after a period of confinement during which people were not exposed to common pathogens, which could have weakened their immune systems. But it’s also possible that babies are simply being tested for parechovirus more frequently.
“Our ‘eyes’ have gotten better, so we’re seeing more,” Dr. Kenneth Alexander, chief of infectious diseases at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Florida, told the New York Times this month.