Parechovirus Sickened 23 Infants in Nashville, C.D.C. Says

According to a report released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in six weeks this spring, 23 babies were admitted to a Tennessee hospital for treatment for parechovirus, a common virus that in rare cases poses a fatal threat to infants. Can do. ,

The CDC said twenty-one children recovered without complications, but one had hearing loss and a risk of blood clots, while another child experienced frequent seizures and was expected to suffer from severe developmental delay.

The CDC said the children admitted to a Nashville hospital — Monroe Carell Junior Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University — were between 5 days and 3 months old, and their illnesses were diagnosed between April 12 and May 24. The report described the infections as “an unusually large cluster”. According to the report, six more cases have been identified in hospital at other times this year than in recent years, which are “peaking in infections”.

The CDC said thirteen of the patients were girls and 10 were boys, and they were all previously healthy.

Shortly after this cluster, the CDC alerted doctors this month that the type of parechovirus associated with severe disease had been spreading nationally since May. This suggests parechovirus as a diagnosis for children with an unexplained fever or seizures.

Parechovirus is so common that most children are infected by the time they reach kindergarten, and symptoms include runny nose and sneezing – which we usually associate with the common cold.

But according to the CDC, babies younger than 3 months old, and especially babies under one month old, are at higher risk of serious illness.

There is no cure for parechovirus, but the diagnosis can still dictate how doctors manage the disease.

Experts say it is possible that the increase in cases comes from increased socialization after the lockdown period, during which people were not exposed to common pathogens, which could have weakened their immune systems. But it is also possible that babies are being tested more often for parechovirus.

“Our ‘eyes’ get 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.