The isolation of an unclassified virus from an outbreak of infantile diarrhoea

Abstract

A virus was isolated from fifteen of nineteen children living in an infants' home during an outbreak of diarrhoea. The virus possesses many of the characteristics of the enterovirus group but is serologically distinct from any of the accepted members of this group. It is non-pathogenic for unweaned mice, non-cytopathic in tissue cultures of monkey kidney, but is rapidly cytopathic for tissue-cultured cells of human origin. It is serologically similar to virus Hu 659 isolated by Abrahams in the United States (personal communication).I should like to thank the Director-General of Public Health and State Psychiatric Services, New South Wales, for permission to publish.

Diarrhoea in general practice: a sixteen-year report of investigations in a microbiology laboratory, with epidemiological assessment

“…Although recognized viruses have been recovered from the faeces of only a small proportion of cases of sporadic gastroenteritis (Cramblett & Siewers, 1965) filtrate transmission from outbreaks in which no pathogen was isolated has been demonstrated repeatedly (Fukumi et al 1957;Buscho et al 1973). There is an increasing number of reports of the association of gastroenteritis with the presence of specific viral particles in the faeces (Murphy, 1964;Clarke et al 1972;British Medical Journal, 1972;Middleton et al 1974;Sexton et al 1974).…”