Advertisement
The virus is from a group of bowel viruses called Coxsackie, named after the village in New York where the first type was isolated in 1949 (probably felt very isolated in rural New York). Perhaps a dubious honor at best? These viruses are classified into group A, with many known strains, and group B, with fewer strains. The ones responsible for hand, foot and mouth are mostly A16 and sometimes A5, A10 or A71.
The virus is transmitted somehow from either end of someone’s digestive tract to someone else’s mouth, where the virus infects the throat. The incubation period is five to seven days, range three to 10, with the obvious illness subsequently lasting about a week. The majority of “victims” are children, mainly younger than 10.
The first sign is often, but not always, a mild fever with a vague feeling of sickness. In the back of the person’s throat a sparse number of tiny blisters pop up that quickly rupture to form single, painful ulcerations. This part is called stomatitis (stoma- mouth, -itis- inflammation). These spots heal uneventfully.
Hands and/or feet next develop small single blisters around fingers and toes and some on palms or soles, few in number, that are more oval than round, and can be a bit tender. These also heal with no marks. Immunity to future infection is complete after one episode.
The entire picture is only modest in severity. One problem in infants is to get fluid in them when they don’t want to feed, to avoid dehydration. A very rare complication is a meningitis. The main difficulty is sorting out this picture from similar ones, like herpangina, a different Coxsackie virus throat infection with several painful ulcers in the back of the throat and nothing more, or possibly a primary herpes simplex infection.
The human infection is not to be confused with the quadruped viral infection called hoof and mouth disease of bovine and sheep species. That is not communicable to our species.
There is one exceedingly common biped, or human, affliction that produces a distinct oral inflammation, or stomatitis that is very easy to diagnose and distinguish from hand, foot and mouth infections.
I am referring to foot-in-mouth disease, in which we open mouth and insert foot, shoe and all. The attack is often unexpected, and the symptoms are quite familiar. It only leaves a blistered ego, a burning sensation on your tongue and a wretched taste in your mouth that lasts for a while. It can afflict any of us many times over. There is no treatment for it, and there is no vaccine against it. We never seem to become immune to it. Could we label it shoe leather stomatitis?
