A New Kid Disease?

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Julie W.'s momlogic: Kids and parents at my daughter's preschool are breaking out in rash from an illness I never heard of before: Fifth Disease.

All Moms dread the school e-mails alerting us of strep, pink eye or, even worse, lice. But I just got a new one in my inbox recently, warning me of Fifth Disease. I didn't even know what Fifth Disease was! Anything with "disease" in the title certainly didn't sound good. The letter said kids get fever followed by a red mark on their face that looks as if they have been slapped. That soon develops into a full body rash. Just what we need, another contagious illness that our kids can pass around at school.

Then the parents started to get it too. In adults, Fifth Disease can cause joint pain. One friend's hands began to ache so badly, she feared she was getting arthritis. She couldn't even get out of bed for three whole days.

Momlogic asked Dr. Rachel Franklin to explain Fifth Disease:

"Fifth disease is so named because it was the fifth viral illness to be identified which had a rash (called a "viral exanthem") associated with it. The others are measles/rubeola, rubella, chickenpox/varicella and roseola. It is a common childhood illness that affects mostly those between 5 and 14 years old, occurs mostly during the winter and spring and can occur in outbreaks in schools. Between 20 to 50 percent of children in a school will become infected during an outbreak. It is spread by droplets during coughing or sneezing.

Fifth disease starts about four to 14 days after exposure with fever, nasal congestion and mild headache or fatigue. It is during this phase that the person is infectious. Once the rash develops three to seven days after the symptoms start, the fever breaks and the person is no longer contagious. The rash lasts from three days to three weeks and can get brighter during exercise, bathing in hot water, or stress, and it usually does not itch. It is an incredibly mild illness for children and for most adults, although adults (especially women for unknown reasons) can have joint pains and muscle aches during the illness and some people also have diarrhea, nausea or abdominal pain."

Great. One more illness that we have to worry about our little germ bugs are bringing home with them from school.

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First of all I have five children at home. Twin three year old boys, a four year old boy, a eight year old daughter and a seventeen year old son. This year we really experienced the fifths disease and boy was it an experience. It started with one of my twins then moved to the four year old and then to the other twin. Lots of FUN. The odd thing is we did not realize until the end that my husband is the one the acually brought it home. We thought he was getting the shingles and he went to the doctor who said he was having an allergic reaction. A day later he felt like he had the flu. Then the kids began and they looked aweful. This was definately not a normal experience.

- Allison

Posted 05/15/08 10:01 AM

It vey bad if pregnant women are exposed in the First Trimester and can cause the baby to go in to heart failure and even could cause a miscarrage. SO if pregnant make sure your ob test you for fifths as soon as posible so you can find out if you have already had. Because if you have had it once you won’t get it agin.

- Jamie

Posted 05/16/08 10:04 AM

OOOOHHHHH!!! so, that’s what that was…my whole family had those exact symptoms, one of us after another, for about 2 months. We all thought we were getting some weird allergy, but couldn’t figure out why we didn’t all get sick at the same time. I got the joint pain and thought it was just another menopause symptom. Good to know we can’t get it again.

- lisa

Posted 07/10/08 11:55 AM