“Deadly Enterovirus-D68?”
Usually it goes down as “food poisoning” and rarely is it deadly.
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I think you have it mixed up with something else. It affects breathing, and a strain of it has broken out lately in the States; has caused paralysis and deaths in kids.
E-S - I believe you are thinking of the Norwalk virus. Norwalk (Norovirus) is a single strand RNA virus and so are Enteroviruses but Norwalk is not an Enterovirus; Norwalk belonging to a different family of viruses. Norwalk is the virus that causes the “stomach bug” or what is called in the UK, the “Winter Vomiting Bug” or is often mistaken for food poisoning (which is typically from consuming spoiled foods not kept at proper temperature or contaminanated with bacteria such as Salmonella, Shigella, E. coli). Norwalk is the virus that causes outbreaks of vomiting and diarrhea on cruise ships and in schools and nursing homes and is transmitted via the fecal to mouth vector and can contaminate food.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norovirus
“Noroviruses are the most common cause of viral gastroenteritis in humans, and affect people of all ages:”…. “Norovirus infection is characterized by nausea, forceful vomiting, watery diarrhea, abdominal pain, and in some cases, loss of taste. General lethargy, weakness, muscle aches, headache, and low-grade fever may occur. The disease is usually self-limiting, and severe illness is rare. Although having norovirus can be unpleasant, it is not usually dangerous and most who contract it make a full recovery within a couple of days.[5] The virus affects around 267 million people and causes over 200,000 deaths each year; these deaths are usually in less developed countries and in the very young, elderly and immuno-suppressed.”
The Enterovirus family of viruses has many species and subspecies, is a very large family of related viruses. Polio is in the family of enternorvirus. So is Hand Foot and Mouth disease and viral “Pink Eye” which is in the family of non-polio enteroviruses. While EV-D68 is believed to have been rather rare it has been known to cause small outbreaks in the US and in Europe and Japan (but interestingly not so much in Mexico and central and south America) since the early 1960’s and despite the media hype, non-polio enteroviruses are not particularly rare at all and is believed to be responsible for most of what people describe as “summer colds” (non-Rhinovirus “colds” typically seen in late summer and early fall), and typically cause mild to moderate cold like symptoms or no symptoms at all.
What makes this outbreak of EV-D 68 unusual is how widespread it is and that it makes some kids very, very ill with severe breathing problems that require hospitalization and in some cases intubation. But, while not all, most of those kids also have a history of asthma or allergies and or prior histories of breathing problems.
But to put this somewhat into perspective; every year hundreds of children and adults are hospitalized with severe respiratory distress caused by complications of influenza and other enteroviruses, most typically from developing secondary pneumonia or bacterial infections, and many thousands die from it each and every year.