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Home › Articles › Nutrition and Health › Fifth Disease

Fifth Disease

The Signs and Symptoms

By Gwen Morrison

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When children start preschool or enter a daycare environment, adorable artwork is not all they'll bring home. Germs are easily passed from one child to another, which means an increased risk for illnesses. While the common cold, diarrhea, the flu and chicken pox are the most common, there is one childhood disease that keeps a low profile and can affect adults as well.

Fifth disease, or erythema infectiosum, is a viral infection that is caused by a human parvovirus (B19). This virus is one that lives only in humans. Although it rarely produces serious results in those who suffer from it, it can be a very painful and lengthy illness.

Contracting Fifth Disease
"It seems to be transmitted mainly by body fluids," says Dr. Vinay N. Reddy of Bloomfield, Mich. "Usually it is by breathing tiny droplets exhaled or coughed out by someone who's infected. It can also be transmitted by contact with blood from an infected person."

According to the New York State Department of Health, it can take up to two weeks after exposure for some children to start noticing symptoms related to the infection.

"I contracted [fifth disease] from one of my children," says Kimberley Schmahl of St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. "Then I passed it on to my husband. As it turned out, the kids had milder symptoms than I did."

Symptoms
"At first, patients usually have a mild fever, muscle aches, headache and malaise [feeling lousy]," says Dr. Reddy. "Seven to 10 days after symptoms start, patients develop a rash actually two rather different rashes: a lacy, red, bumpy rash, which starts on the arms and spreads downward to the body, buttocks and thighs and also a very red rash on the cheeks, which often makes a child look like he has been slapped in the face."

Because of the red face, fifth disease is often called "slapped face syndrome" by the medical community.

"Occasionally the rash looks like German measles, rather than the typical fifth disease rash," says Dr. Reddy. "There are patients who are infected with the virus and have no symptoms, some who may develop mild cold symptoms with no rash."

Dr. Reddy explains that those people with blood-cell diseases (such as sickle cell disease) who become infected with the virus will sometimes stop producing red blood cells entirely for a few days, possibly causing anemia in those patients.

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