Article in Japanese

Human parechovirus type 4 infection: four infant case reports

Mitsumasa OSUNA¹⁾, Maiko YAMASHITA¹⁾, Fumiko TANAKA¹⁾

Human parechoviruses (HPeVs) are known to cause mild respiratory or gastrointestinal symptoms in infants. Most HPeVs cause only self-limiting symptoms but HPeV type 3 (HPeV-3) can sometimes cause severe illness such as sepsis and meningitis in neonates and early infants. HPeV-1 and HPeV-3 are the types detected most frequently, but other types such as HPeV-4 are detected rarely. Little is known about HPeV-4 infections because only a few neonatal cases have been reported.
This study reported a series of 4 infant cases with HPeV-4 infections in the summer of 2018. They were admitted to this hospital with a chief complaint of fever. All of them had high fever and tachycardia, and their disease were diagnosed as viral sepsis based on SIRS (systemic inflammatory response syndrome) criteria. The fever lasted 12 to 30 hours. None of them had either respiratory or gastrointestinal symptoms. Three cases had feeding problems. One had highly elevated liver enzyme levels after decline of fever. HPeV-4 was detected from pharyngeal or fecal samples of all four cases.
HPeV-4 also can cause severe illness like HPeV-3 in neonates and early infants, but the duration of fever was shorter in these patients than in HPeV-3 infections.

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1) Department of Pediatrics, Saiseikai Yokohamashi Nanbu Hospital

Key words	human parechoviruses type 4, infants, sepsis, SIRS(systemic inflammatory response syndrome)
Received	October 15, 2019
Accepted	March 3, 2020

32 (2)：128─133,2020