Word: parainfluenzae
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...already have heart or lung disease, and the elderly-to get flu shots. Among children, much of the illness was of an old type, though one so recently distinguished from other diseases by medical scientists that it is not yet listed in the standard medical texts or dictionaries: parainfluenza. The same disease is also suspected in some adult illnesses...
...alarming to many doctors was a New York City outbreak of bronchiolitis and viral pneumonia among children. Some hospitals reported them twice as prevalent as ever before. And for this the Asian A-2 virus was not to blame. In many cases, the guilty microbe was one of the parainfluenza viruses...
There are three such viruses, distinguished by numbers.* Parainfluenza 1 was first called Sendai virus, after the Japanese city where it was originally isolated. It is close enough kin to the true flu viruses to have once been called influenza D. It has now been found around the world. At one time or another, nearly every child in the U.S. gets infected with paraflu 1, and the illness is most likely to be severe in the very young. The resulting antibody may last a lifetime, but gives only partial immunity: an adult can be reinfected with the same virus, though...
...Parainfluenza 2 is one of the common causes of croup in children. Whether it can reinfect them or attack adults is not yet known. Parainfluenza 3 behaves much like type 1. But all these viruses are so new to science that medical researchers still do not know such important details as the differences in their incubation periods after they infect a victim. New York City's concurrent outbreaks of flu and paraflu may provide some useful clues. Pediatricians have noted that parents tend to come down with a moderately severe illness about six days after a child gets sick...
...Viruses & a Microbe. Since the commonest victims of acute respiratory disease-ARD in medical jargon-are children, the PHS's vaccine program will be tailored for them. The first vaccines will be made from ten viruses-respiratory syncytial virus (the most important), three types of parainfluenza virus, six of adenovirus-and one non-viral microbe, the "Eaton agent" (TIME, Nov. 10). Together, these microbes are estimated to cause 60% of ARD cases judged to be severe enough to send most children into hospitals...