Symptoms: Vary according to the virus
Home care: In the case of illness caused by an intestinal virus, give aspirin or paracetamol to relieve pain and fever. Refer to the appropriate section for treatment of diseases caused by a specific virus.
Precautions
- Because there are so many different types of viruses, diagnosis can be very difficult.
- Immunity against any one virus is short-lived, so a child can have one virus infection right after another.
- Call the doctor if your child has any of the following symptoms: stiff neck or back; severe headache and vomiting; extreme weakness or collapse; confusion.
- The following are not symptoms of Coxsackie or ECHO viruses: rash resembling red sandpaper or red goose bumps; pus-like discharge from eyes, nose, or ears; reddish-purple spots; tender, red, enlarging lymph nodes; severe earache; blood in stool; severe cough; breathing difficulty.
A virus is a germ, smaller than a bacterium that can live only within a living cell. Many common illnesses are caused by a particular virus, among them mumps, chicken pox, measles, rubella (German measles), mononucleosis, cat scratch fever, hepatitis, warts, and roseola. Two large groups of other viruses – the respiratory viruses and the intestinal viruses – cause a variety of similar illnesses in children.
The respiratory viruses include the adenoviruses, parainfluenza viruses, rhinoviruses, influenza viruses, and the respiratory syncytial virus. The intestinal viruses (enteroviruses) inhabit the intestinal tract and are divided into Coxsackie viruses (of which 30 varieties are known so far), enteric cytopathogenic human orphan (ECHO) viruses (with 31 known types), and the three polio viruses. Coxsackie viruses are responsible for hand, foot, and mouth disease, herpangina, and pleurodynia. Herpangina lasts three to six days and produces a fever, sore throat, swollen neck glands, and painful ulcers on the soft palate, tonsils, and throat. Pleurodynia is an inflammation of the nerves between the ribs, and it causes intense pain, aggravated by breathing, on one side of the chest.
ECHO viruses may cause diarrhea. Coxsackie and ECHO viruses may cause symptoms of a common cold, a fever with or without a rash, encephalitis (inflammation of the brain), or paralysis.
The Coxsackie and ECHO viruses have an incubation period of three to five days or more, and they can be spread via the mouth or in the stool. Immunity against any one of them is short-lived. Therefore, a child can have one virus right after another.
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