Hi Elaine,
Maybe the doctors on this list will have other information, but I went to
the website of the Center for Disease Control and it says, in part:
Epstein-Barr virus, frequently referred to as EBV, is a member of the
herpesvirus family and one of the most common human viruses. The virus occurs
worldwide, and most people become infected with EBV sometime during their lives.
In the United States, as many as 95% of adults between 35 and 40 years of age
have been infected. Infants become susceptible to EBV as soon as maternal
antibody protection (present at birth) disappears. Many children become infected
with EBV, and these infections usually cause no symptoms or are
indistinguishable from the other mild, brief illnesses of childhood. In the United States
and in other developed countries, many persons are not infected with EBV in
their childhood years. When infection with EBV occurs during adolescence or
young adulthood, it causes infectious mononucleosis 35% to 50% of the time.
There are no known associations between active EBV infection and problems
during pregnancy, such as miscarriages or birth defects. Although the symptoms
of infectious mononucleosis usually resolve in 1 or 2 months, EBV remains
dormant or latent in a few cells in the throat and blood for the rest of the
person's life. Periodically, the virus can reactivate and is commonly found in
the saliva of infected persons. This reactivation usually occurs without
symptoms of illness.
Most individuals exposed to people with infectious mononucleosis have
previously been infected with EBV and are not at risk for infectious mononucleosis.
In addition, transmission of EBV requires intimate contact with the saliva
(found in the mouth) of an infected person. Transmission of this virus through
the air or blood does not normally occur. The incubation period, or the time
from infection to appearance of symptoms, ranges from 4 to 6 weeks. Persons
with infectious mononucleosis may be able to spread the infection to others
for a period of weeks. However, no special precautions or isolation procedures
are recommended, since the virus is also found frequently in the saliva of
healthy people. In fact, many healthy people can carry and spread the virus
intermittently for life. These people are usually the primary reservoir for
person-to-person transmission. For this reason, transmission of the virus is
almost impossible to prevent.
_http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/ebv.htm_
(http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/ebv.htm)
Kathy
Kathleen Fallon Pasakarnis, M.Ed. IBCLC
Nurturing Family Lactation and Parenting Services
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