Health care providers in several states have reported a virus that can cause seizures, meningitis and other serious illnesses in infants under 3 months old, federal officials said Thursday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued an alert notifying doctors and public health departments that cases of parechovirus have been seen in newborns and young infants since May.
The alert does not say which states have seen infections in young children or how many cases have been reported.
The advisory notes that because there is no systematic parechovirus surveillance, it is unclear how the number of cases compares to previous seasons. But increased testing in recent years could explain a higher number of cases, the agency said.
Every positive case the agency records involves PeV-A3, the type of parechovirus that most often causes severe illness, the CDC said.
The virus, a common childhood pathogen that circulates in summer and fall and is spread through sneezes, coughs, saliva and feces, causes less severe illness in children older than 6 months, the agency said. agency. Symptoms include rash, upper respiratory infection, and fever.
Experts who examined the cerebrospinal fluid of babies with severe parechovirus infections found that their white blood cells were gone or nearly gone.
There is no cure for the virus.
The alert encourages doctors to test for the virus and keep infants hospitalized with infections together to avoid spreading the disease in nurseries or neonatal intensive care units.
–
