Outbreak of Adenovirus Infection in the Portsmouth Naval Command, 1958
1959; BMJ; Volume: 1; Issue: 5120 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1136/bmj.1.5120.470
ISSN0959-8138
Autores Tópico(s)Viral gastroenteritis research and epidemiology
ResumoThe Commission on Acute Respiratory Diseases of the United States Army (1946) postulated the existence of a special disease of the upper respiratory tract affecting chiefly young recruits during their first four weeks of military training.A virus agent was eventually isolated by Hilleman and Werner (1954) from cases of atypical pneumonia and acute respiratory disease, and found to be similar to a " masked " virus recovered from adenoid tissue removed at operation from young children (Rowe et al., 1953).Adenovirus infection in military recruits causes febrile upper respiratory catarrh with sore throat and cough.About half the patients develop an exudate on the tonsils, and up to 16% may show radiological evidence of pneumonitis (Hilleman, 1956).These infections are of great importance to American Service authorities, and their cost has been estimated at nine million dollars a year.Outbreaks in this country have been reported from Army and R.A.F.establishments (Tyrrell et al., 1956;Andrews et al., 1956) and from residential schools (Kendall et al., 1957).The virus has at least seventeen serotypes (Rowe et al., 1958), and to avoid confusion the term " adenovirus " was proposed to cover the group.Types 3, 4, and 7 are responsible for most military cases (Hilleman, 1956); types 1, 2, and 5 cause respiratory infections in young children; and types 6, 8, and 10 are mainly implicated in eye infections (J.Amer.Med.Ass., 1957).The outbreak reported here became manifest in the Portsmouth Naval Command in February, 1958.It was soon realized that this outbreak was larger than any previously reported from Service sources in this country, and it was decided to investigate its effect on the personnel in five of the larger establishments ( A, B, C, D, andE). Laboratory MethodsPaired sera were taken in the first ten days of illness and two weeks or more later.They were taken routinely from patients admitted to hospital with upper respiratory infections from January and from patients in sick quarters in centres A, B, and C from February until April.Convalescent sera, taken after the first ten days of illness, were obtained from patients in centres A, B, C, D, and E. They were frozen until tested by complement-fixation against antigens of influenza A, B, and C, Rickettsia burneti, adenovirus, and the psittacosis-L.G.V. group of viruses described by Andrews et al. (1956).
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