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| What is the Child-Killing Virus? |
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An epidemic of one type of hand-foot-mouth disease in
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China is starting to appear in news reports around the
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world as the child-killing virus. More than forty people
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have already died in this outbreak; all of them have
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been children. The culprit is enterovirus 71, or EV-71.
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It’s already made more than 25,000 children sick on
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the Chinese mainland. Hand-foot-mouth disease can
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be caused by any of several related viruses, most com-
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monly by one called coxsackievirus A-16. All forms of
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hand-foot-mouth disease are very contagious. Most of the
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time, hand-foot-mouth disease is very mild. But it can be
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extremely serious, sometimes resulting in paralysis, heart
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problems, or even death. The current outbreak is a serious one, but
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it is not unique. There was a similar serious outbreak about 10 years ago in Taiwan,
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Malaysia, and Borneo, and it did not become a global epidemic. There are two reasons to
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follow the story this time around: 1) EV-71 likes warm weather and usually peaks in the late
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summer months so the outbreak....continued - Previous articles by Dr. Greene
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Alan Greene M.D., FAAP
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