The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Health Alert Network (HAN) Health Advisory to inform clinicians and public health departments that parechovirus (PeV) is currently circulating in the United States.
Since May 2022, CDC has received reports from healthcare providers in multiple states of PeV infections in neonates and young infants. Parechoviruses are a group of viruses known to cause a spectrum of disease in humans. Clinicians are encouraged to include PeV in the differential diagnoses of infants presenting with fever, sepsis-like syndrome, or neurologic illness (seizures, meningitis) without another known cause and to test for PeV in children with signs and symptoms compatible with PeV infection (see below). Commercial laboratory assays, multiplex platforms for meningitis and encephalitis, and testing through state public health laboratories (SPHLs) are available to test cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for PeV to confirm a diagnosis. CDC laboratory support is also available for testing and typing patient specimens.
To date, all PeV positive specimens tested and typed at CDC were type PeV-A3. Because there is presently no systematic surveillance for PeVs in the United States, it is not clear how the number of PeV cases reported in 2022 compares to previous seasons. PeV laboratory testing has become more widely available in recent years, and it is possible that increased testing has led to a higher number of PeV diagnoses compared with previous years.
