SARS-like virus found in ill kids

A newly discovered virus related to the SARS virus may cause several mysterious childhood ailments, including Kawasaki disease, U.S. researchers have reported.

The new virus is a coronavirus, a family of viruses that causes common colds, animal diseases and severe acute respiratory syndrome, a new disease that emerged in China in 2003, killing 800 people globally and causing alarm before it was contained.

Two studies, reported in the Feb. 15 edition of the Journal of Infectious Diseases and available online, link this new virus to Kawasaki disease, the most common cause of acquired heart disease in children in developed countries.

Jeffrey Kahn and colleagues at Yale University in Connecticut identified what they call the New Haven coronavirus.

They tested 895 ill children under age 5 who had tested negative for other viral infections. They found that 79 of them, or 9%, had the New Haven coronavirus.

Symptoms included fever, cough, runny nose, rapid breathing, abnormal breath sounds and low blood oxygen levels.

They analyzed respiratory secretions from 11 children diagnosed with Kawasaki disease and 22 children without the disease.

Eight of the 11 Kawasaki patients tested positive for the New Haven coronavirus but just one child without Kawasaki symptoms tested positive.