Emergence of Adenovirus Cause for Concern, Not Panic

As if nurses don't have enough to worry about at the start of cold and flu season, U.S. health officials alerted the country last month to one more thing to watch for — a strain of a usually mild virus that sometimes turns nasty.

Adenoviruses commonly cause the symptoms of a cold — runny nose, coughing, mild congestion. But an outbreak of a rare adenovirus variant called AD14 was responsible for nine deaths among 140 people infected in Washington state, Oregon, and Texas last spring and summer, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Fifty-three patients were hospitalized, nearly half of them in ICUs.

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