Influenza Virus A2 Infections

Sir .—We were interested to read the report by J. W. Paisley and colleagues in theJournal(132:34, 1978) describing the clinical manifestations of influenza virus A 2 infections in young children. This article confirms several of the findings in our own published report of a similar group of children in hospital. 1 The main findings of both studies are compared in the accompanying Table. In our study, gastrointestinal symptoms were the usual presentation in babies aged younger than 6 months of age. Fifty percent of the babies in this age group, nine of 18, had diarrhea and vomiting or diarrhea. Two babies required intravenous fluids and one had severe hypernatremic dehydration. Thus, of the 17 children who had diarrhea and vomiting or diarrhea alone, only four were older than 6 months of age. The higher incidence of convulsions in our series, 37%, is mainly due to the higher