Erythema Infectiosum—Report of an Area-Wide Outbreak

Generalized Petechial Rashes in Children During a Parvovirus B19 Outbreak

“…11,[13][14][15] In the past, petechial or purpuric rashes may have been overlooked during "classic" investigations of large outbreaks of erythema infectiosum reported in the 1920s to 1940s, [16][17][18] and it is notable that 2 outbreak reports from the 1950s did describe, in passing, exceptional cases of hemorrhagic rash amid hundreds of typical cases of erythema infectiosum. 19,20 Even with the advent of serologic and direct virologic methods for detecting parvovirus infection, it is still possible that cases of parvovirus-associated hemorrhagic rashes are being overlooked because previous case reports emphasized the distinctively focal nature of these rashes. Petechiae rashes in some of our cases had focal accentuation (in the distal extremities, groin, or axillae), but petechiae were widely distributed in all cases and, in this respect, more closely resembled the generalized rashes described in a few case reports.…”