Pleconaril

Abstract

Members of the virus family Picornaviridae are ubiquitous in nature and responsible for a broad spectrum of clinical syndromes ranging from the common cold to neonatal en-teroviral sepsis. The two genuses of classification of picornaviridae are the enteroviridae and rhinoviridae. Rhinoviruses express human parisitization clinically as a naso-pharyngeal syndrome (the “common cold”) which occurs in all populations and age groups and can take up to two weeks to resolve. Exceptions to the uncomplicated course of rhinovirus nasopharyngeal infection include special patient sets at risk for infectious complications including patients with asthma, congestive heart failure, bronchiectasis and cystic fibrosis.¹ In contrast, the pathology of enterovirus disease in humans relies principally upon the somatotopic localization of infection after primary replication in the gastrointestinal tract and subsequent bloodborne dissemination.² Myocarditis, meningitis, encephalitis, respiratory syndromes (ranging from nasopharyngitis to lobar pneumonia), and mucocutaneous manifestations such as hand, foot and mouth disease and herpangina characterize the multifaceted presentations of enterovirus disease in humans.³ The absence of precise localization of seeded bloodborne infection by enterovirus may eventuate in an ill-defined “transition” syndrome characterized by fever, malaise, myalgias, headache and mild respiratory complaints, often referred to as “summer flu”, given the predilection of enteroviruses to express disease during the summer and early fall months. The high prevalence of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic infections has led to the analogy of the human populations representing an ‘ocean’ of enterovirus infections, with ‘islands’ in the ocean representing discrete and well recognized organ-specific clinically expressed syndromes.