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Respiratory Syncytial Virus
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Respiratory Syncytial Virus is a disease of infants and toddlers that affects the lungs and the rest of the respiratory tract. It is a common virus that infects most babies by the age of two although adults have been known to be infected. When the infection occurs in adults, it feels like a mild cold or respiratory infection. This is also true if older children become infected. In babies, however, the infection can be severe and sometimes life threatening. It can also be severe in older adults that with heart or lung diseases.
The signs and symptoms of the RSV virus usually begin about four to six days after a child is exposed to the virus. In adults and older children, you can see congestion in the nasal cavity, low grade fever, dry cough, sore throat, malaise and mild headache.
When the virus becomes severe, it results in pneumonia or bronchiolitis, which is an inflammation of the small airways of the lungs. You can also get a high fever, wheezing that mimics asthma, difficulty breathing, the feeling that you have to sit up to breathe, rapid breathing and cyanosis or bluish tinge to the skin. These symptoms are particularly true for infants that can use accessory muscles in order to breathe. Many will eat poorly and will be irritable or lethargic.
It takes about eight to fifteen days to recover from an RSV infection. Babies tend to have a longer course and are more likely to be hospitalized or to die from the illness. It is important to seek medical attention if you have a baby that is having trouble breathing, appears cyanotic or has a fever that won't go down with the usual medications. This may mean that the baby requires hospitalization.
Respiratory syncytial virus is an infection that gets into the body through the eyes, mouth or nose. Transmission happens when someone coughs or sneezes or when someone touches another who has the disease, such as in shaking hands. If you touch your mouth or nose after having RSV particles on your hand, you have the potential to get RSV. RSV is very contagious that passes quickly through families and daycares. You are most contagious a few days after getting the infection but it can also spread up to several weeks after the infection has begun.
Most children have had the disease by the time they are two years of age. Kids tend to get the disease earlier if they come from large families or are daycare kids. Kids exposed to cigarette smoke or high levels of air pollution are more likely to get a severe case of respiratory syncytial virus. The "season" for RSV tends to begin in the autumn and end in the springtime.
Children at risk of severe disease are those that are younger than six months of age, those who were born prematurely or who have a condition such as a congenital heart disease. Children undergoing chemotherapy or who have a poor immune system are likely to get severe RSV infection.
Older adults get more severe infections than younger adults. People with immunodeficiency syndromes such as HIV/AIDS tend to get sicker. Those who have congestive heart failure or COPD suffer more from RSV.
Complications of RSV include hospitalization, pneumonia, bronchiolitis, ear infections, asthma and other infectious diseases you'll get secondarily.
When seeing a doctor for RSV, he or she may do a chest x-ray to see if there is bronchial disease or pneumonia. A pulse oximetry may be done that detects the amount of oxygen in the bloodstream. It is often low in severe cases of RSV. Blood tests check the white blood cell count, which may be normal in RSV. The doctor can do nasal swabs of the throat or nose to detect the presence of RSV.
The use of antibiotics is controversial because they are useless in pure cases of RSV. If there are secondary bacterial infections then antibiotics do some good. This is true if there is secondary pneumonia or a secondary ear infection, for example. Tylenol or ibuprofen are good for treatment of fever. If hospitalization is necessary, humidified air and IV fluids are given. In severe cases, mechanical ventilation is required until the child can breathe on his or her own. Albuterol is sometimes given as a nebulizer treatment to open up the airways and aid breathing.