Febrile illness due to a parvovirus.

The emerging story of a human parvovirus-like agent

“…However, found that three of the four blood donors from Dr Cossart's group of nine who were followed up, became ill shortly after giving blood; two complained of fatigue which was in one individual accompanied by leucopenia, while the third developed a rash. Leucopenia was also reported in two patients studied by Schneerson, Mortimer & Vandervelde (1980). These two young men also suffered fever, malaise and headache, beginning some nine days after being tattooed.…”

“…Although this virus was found as a systemic infection in both Dr Cossart's eleven subjects and a further four subjects described subsequently (Paver & Clarke, 1976;Schneerson, Mortimer & Vandervelde, 1980) it was not until 1981 that a clearly defined clinical syndrome was identified as attributable to infection with this agent. Work in the Departments of Microbiology and Haematology, King's College Hospital Medical School and collaboration with the MRC laboratory at Kingston, Jamaica has shown that infection with the PVLA is the major cause of aplastic crisis in children with sickle cell anaemia (Sergeant et al 1981, Anderson et al 1982a.…”

Characterization of the Genome of the Agent of Erythrocyte Aplasia Permits its Classification as a Human Parvovirus

“…The virus was provisionally described as a human parvovirus-like agent (PVLA) by virtue of its morphology, size (23 nm) and buoyant density in CsC1 (1.36 to 1.40 g/ml), although no antigenic relationship could be detected in electrophoresis tests with recognized parvoviruses. Following this description sporadic cases of infection were reported in association with febrile illness Shneerson et al, 1980) but the nature of this agent and its pathological significance in man remained obscure. With the identification of a defined syndrome of serious clinical illness attributable to infection with this virus Serjeant et al, 1981) interest has been revived; it is now clear that in patients with chronic haemolytic anaemias, infection with this agent results in a transient interruption in the production of erythrocytes, leading to a profound but self-limiting anaemia (Anderson et al, 1982a;Duncan et al, 1983;Kelleher et al, 1983;Rao et al, 1983), the so-called 'aplastic crisis'.…”

Aplastic crisis caused by parvovirus B19 in an adult patient with sickle-cell disease

“…The virus was identified again two years later in two blood donors 12 , and six years later in two British soldiers returning from Africa 15 , all of which suffering from nonspecific febrile illness. These patients were probably examples of the many instances in which parvovirus determines asymptomatic infection or nonspecific febrile disease.…”