THE DISTRIBUTION OF GROUP B COXSACKIE VIRUSES IN A CHILDREN'S INSTITUTION

[摘要] Two cases of clinical poliomyelitis occurred within a week among 400 children in an orphanage. The first case was paralytic and was due to type 1 poliomyelitis virus. The second case was nonparalytic and only Coxsackie B virus, type 4, was isolated from his feces. This is thought to have been the causative agent of his disease.At the time the two cases occurred, the stools of 153 well children, including the intimate associates of the patients, and 43 of the 55 adults in the orphanage, were tested in tissue culture for virus. Twenty-four agents, cytopathogenic for monkey kidney cells, were isolated from the children and none from the adults. The viruses isolated proved to be Coxsackie B2 and B4, except for two that were antigenically related to ECHO virus, type 14.Antibody studies indicated that during the succeeding 2 months 24% of 50 children, not demonstrated to have been excreting virus at the time of sampling, developed neutralizing antibodies against Coxsackie B4 virus and 6% against B2. It was estimated that approximately 130 children were infected with Coxsackie B4 with only 1 clinical case of aseptic meningitis.Serologic evidence indicated that approximately one third of the children had been infected with the virus related to type 14 ECHO virus, but that only one child developed a new infection during the 2 months of the study.As no evidence could be found of inapparent poliomyelitis infection in the orphanage, it would seem likely that the isolated case of poliomyelitis became infected during a previous hospital admission, 11 days before he developed symptoms of poliomyclitis. During 2 days of contact he did not appear to have disseminated the virus to his associates in the orphanage.These data would suggest that types 2 and 4 Coxsackie B viruses probably do not cause pleurodynia because no cases with the symptoms of this disease occurred in spite of the high rate of infection with these agents.

[学科分类] 儿科学