Guard against RSV with these tips
- Clean your hands often and disinfect hard surfaces regularly.
- If you're sick, stay home.
- Don't allow people to kiss your children.
- Keep children away from crowds.
- Don't allow anyone to smoke around your children.
- If your child is in the hospital, ask ill family members and friends to not visit.
For more information, go to choa.org/rsv.
Source: Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta is seeing a record number of patients infected by a respiratory virus that is a common cause of pneumonia in children less than a year old.
Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, infects the lungs and breathing passages. Cases of the virus are up 10 to 20 percent so far this year, said hospital spokeswoman Patty Gregory.
Healthy people who get RSV usually experience mild symptoms that resemble those of the common cold, and recover in a week or two. But RSV can be serious, especially for infants and older adults. It’s the most common cause of bronchiolitis (inflammation of the small airways in the lung) and pneumonia in children younger than 1 year of age, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A warning sign for parents of a possible RSV infection is if their child has trouble breathing, said Dr. Andi Shane, a physician at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and an associate professor of pediatrics at the Emory School of Medicine.
“They are using a lot of effort to breathe, and there’s often a lot of coughing,’’ Shane said. “Sometimes they may have high fevers.”
RSV is associated with an estimated 300 infant deaths per year in the United States and 200,000 infant deaths worldwide. Each year in this country, an estimated 75,000 to 125,000 infants are hospitalized with RSV. Most are younger than 6 months of age.
The increase in RSV infections has come at the same time as a high number of other respiratory virus infections in children, including rhinovirus and adenovirus cases, Shane said.
RSV often infects young children who were born prematurely or have an underlying respiratory or cardiac condition, she added.
‘Extremely scary’
At 4 months old, Peyton Hughes began to have trouble breathing. It looked like a cold, but his symptoms grew worse, and he was taken to Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville in February.
He was diagnosed with RSV and transferred to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Egleston hospital. He was soon joined by his twin brother Jaxon, who also had the virus. The twins were born prematurely.
“It was extremely scary, not knowing a lot about RSV,’’ said their mother, Emilee Hughes, a Hall County teacher.
RSV is spread by contact with respiratory droplets, Shane said. “Good hand hygiene is very important’’ for parents and children to prevent transmission of RSV and other respiratory diseases.
Hope for a vaccine
Researchers at Emory and Children’s are working on developing a vaccine for RSV.
Marty Moore, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Emory School of Medicine, said there has been a nationwide effort for decades to create an RSV vaccine, but it has not been successful. Moore’s team, though, has engineered a vaccine strain that he calls very potent and predicts will be safe.
“The next step is to start a clinical trial,’’ he said.
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