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An article in today's Washington Post reveals the growing concern with Adenovirus 14.  Intrepid readers of this blog will note the multiple dispatches I have written concerning this emergent substrain -- an apparent mutation of Adenovirus 14, one of the 50+ known substrains of adenovirus.

Written by Post writer Rob Stein, the article has been picked up by the wires and news Websites.  titled "Virus starts like a cold — but can be a killer, New form of adenovirus is spreading, but level of threat is unknown," the article does a good job of condensing the adenovirus story into lay-readable form.

What is distressing in this article is the depth and breadth of the emerging epidemic of adenovirus -- and the growing concern that it attacks the young with special verve.  A snippet:

"Infectious agents have the capacity to mutate and change form, and from time to time, either genuinely new agents appear or old agents appear in new guises," said William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at Vanderbilt University. "This appears to be another one of those emerging infections that has taken on genetic material or mutated so that it is now more virulent than it used to be."

The virus, which spreads like those that cause flu or colds, raises many questions: Why has it suddenly become more common? Why is it apparently more dangerous? How often does it make people seriously ill? Who is most vulnerable? Is the threat growing or fading?

‘Questions we’re trying to answer’
"We don't know why it's associated with these severe cases," said Dean D. Erdman, who is studying the virus at CDC headquarters in Atlanta. "We don't know whether it's going to become a bigger problem in the future or whether we'll see more outbreaks of severe disease. These are all questions we're trying to answer."

....But then (Infectious-disease expert David N.) Gilbert (of the Providence Portland Medical Center in Oregon, last April) started seeing patients like Joseph Spencer, 18, a high school varsity swimmer who was suddenly racked by fever, chills and vomiting.

"At first I thought it was just the flu," Spencer said. "But then it was the worst feeling I ever had. I felt so miserable. I really felt like I was dying."

Spencer's mother took him to the emergency room, where he was placed in intensive care, sedated and put on a respirator. "Even then, we told the family we didn't think he was going to survive," Gilbert said.

The teen spent 18 days in the hospital and was able to return home. But after weeks of bed rest and physical therapy, he remains short of breath and weak, and he is having memory problems.

"I don't know if I'll ever be fully recovered," Spencer said. "I never imagined anything like this would ever happen to me."

Spencer was not even the sickest. Of the 30 patients Oregon officials identified as having the virus, seven died. "That's an incredibly high mortality rate," Gilbert said.

One of the many problems with modern medicine is that we are not testing enough for these emerging pathogens. If someone enters an emergency room or doctor's office with flu-like symptoms, and influenza tests are negative, the patient is usually dismissed with a "it's just a cold" sentence and told to get bedrest.  However -- and you'd think we would have learned more in the post-SARS era -- we are not looking for what it is, we are looking for what it isn't.  And if it isn't influenza, we are sent home.  This practice is repeated time and time and time again, all over the world.  We don't look for the culprit -- we are simply too busy, or the doctor is of the opinion that finding a cause is not relevant to the treatment.  Who knows how many general practitioners are even aware of adenovirus 14?

If you search my blogsite for "adenovirus," you will uncover my first entry.  It had to do with my wife's recent illness.  She tested negative for strep, staph and influenza, but whatever virus she acquired knocked her down for days.  I have seen my wife with a cold.  She copes and manages her illness remarkably well.  This year's virus knocked her off her feet for a week.  It was NOT a cold.  What it was, we will never know.  But I strongly suspect adenovirus.

As for me, I am worthless when I get a cold.  Some would say I am worthless all the time, but that is beside the point.  The point is we do not know what we do not know.  But we do know that adenovirus is spreading and infecting people in multiple states, including confirmed cases in Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Oregon, New York, Washington state, California and Illinois.   Deaths have occurred in several of these states.

If we were talking mumps here, we would be inundated with media.  Indeed, yesterday's New York Times covered a mumps outbreak in a Portland, Maine college, and that college has ordered mandatory vaccinations of all students for mumps.  Despite warnings that student dorm and meal smartcards will be deactivated for anyone not vaccinated by Wednesday, many students are ignoring the order and attending classes without vaccine protection. 

But we are talking something else with adenovirus 14 -- we are talking about a wolf in sheep's clothing.  We are talking about a virus that has apparently and suddenly been able to mutate and acquire the genetic traits of more sinister diseases and, as a result, can prey upon the young with deadly force. 

State departments of health need to immediately ramp up the testing capability to detect and confirm the spread of adenovirus 14.  This can, quite literally, mean the difference between life and death for scores of the afflicted.  This is not something to be dismissed as routine.  Young people do not die of the common cold.  Pneumonia does not ordinarily grip the lungs of otherwise extremely healthy young people.  And if physicians know going in that a person is suffering from adenovirus 14, they are far more likely to order life-saving measures early in treatment, rather than later.

Likewise, parents need to know that if a child is suffering from an apparent cold that only grows worse, and their child is having extreme difficulty breathing, by all means get that child to a hospital and have that child tested for flu and adenovirus.  Demand those tests. 

That would be some consolation to Michelle and Don Villers, parents of deceased daughter U.S. Air Force airman Paige Villers (photo) of Coventry Township, Ohio, Paige Villers died Aug. 7, 2007. She died at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas, of Adenovirus 14. (Photo credit Lew Stamp/Akron Beacon Journal) 

The article can be viewed at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22192270/