"We haven't thought of it as something that causes kids to be really sick and need to be admitted to the ICU," said Kris Bryant, hospital epidemiologist at Kosair Children's Hospital.
Scientists who specialize in rhinovirus are used to their chosen microbe being underestimated, and lauded Children's just for testing for it.
There's an "albatross around their neck," that they are "just the common cold virus," said Ian Mackay, a leading researcher in emerging viruses at the Queensland Paediatric Infectious Diseases Laboratory in Australia.
Intrigued
That common cold virus is generally recognized to be responsible for 70 percent or more of colds worldwide, making it the No. 1 cause of respiratory illness.
Mackay was involved with the discovery several years ago of a third group of rhinoviruses, known as human rhinovirus C, that some researchers believe causes more severe illness than the A's and B's. HRV-C presumably has been around for a while, but the molecular tests necessary to find it did not exist until recently.
Mackay also is intrigued by the possibility that the timing of Philadelphia's rhinovirus outbreak - like others, shortly before the flu - was more than coincidence.
A fledgling, highly controversial theory suggests that circulating rhinovirus can somehow delay the spread of influenza - one more reason, Mackay said, to increase the testing and study of rhinovirus.
As a practical matter, finding that rhinovirus is responsible for many illnesses that had been blamed on swine flu may be mainly another motivation to get vaccinated against novel H1N1, researchers said.
Washing your hands and covering your cough is the best way to prevent the spread of both. The only real difference in treatment is that Tamiflu, which reduces the duration of swine flu by one to two days - and is recommended only in severe cases - is useless against rhinovirus.
If the Philadelphia findings are further detailed and found in other cities, however, perhaps they will begin to change perceptions of rhinovirus, said Kathryn Miller, an expert in rhinoviruses and asthma at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
They might serve "to make people more aware," she said. "That plain old common cold virus, maybe we need to take it more seriously."
Updates on public flu vaccine clinics are posted at
Contact staff writer Don Sapatkin at 215-854-2617 or dsapatkin@phillynews.com.
