Enterovirus D68 No Deadlier for Kids Than the Common Cold: Study

Enterovirus D68 made headlines in 2014 when it sickened scores of kids across North America, but a new study says the aggressive virus proved no more deadly than other common cold germs.

The virus was more aggressive, spreading quickly and causing understandable alarm, said Dr. Dominik Mertz, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of infectious diseases at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

Children who came down with enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) also were more likely to have serious difficulty breathing, compared to kids who caught other viruses, Mertz and his colleagues found.

But children with EV-D68 didn’t have a greater risk of death than kids with other viral infections, the researchers found. Youngsters with the virus were also not significantly more likely to need admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), the study authors reported.

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