9-year-old boy state's youngest so far to show West Nile signs

ST. LOUIS -- Preliminary lab tests show that a 9-year-old St. Francois County boy contracted the West Nile virus earlier this month, by far making him the state's youngest victim of the mosquito-borne illness, state health officials said Monday.

The boy was hospitalized about four days in St. Louis for possible West Nile symptoms and has returned to school, said Liz Maserang, the St. Francois County Health Department's communicable disease coordinator.

"He's doing great, doing fine," she said, citing the family's request for privacy in declining to specify the boy's symptoms.

So far, 16 people in Missouri are suspected to have been infected with West Nile, including a 75-year-old St. Louis woman who died earlier this month.

All of those preliminary results have been sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta for confirmation.

So far this year, more than 425 human cases of West Nile -- with 20 deaths -- have been confirmed in the country's worst outbreak since the virus first appeared here in 1999. Seven people died in New York that year; since then, the virus has spread throughout the East and Midwest.

Before the 9-year-old boy's case, the youngest Missouri person to preliminarily test positive for the illness was a 24-year-old woman from western Missouri's Clay County. She was released from a St. Joseph hospital last week.

The 9-year-old Missouri boy wasn't the first child suspected to have been infected with West Nile. Last week in Michigan, officials said a 9-month-old Detroit-area boy may have contracted the virus, from which he was expected to fully recover.

On Monday, Oklahoma health officials confirmed that that state's first two possible West Nile victims included a 12-year-old Tulsa boy, who also has been released from the hospital.

As of Aug. 16, when there were just 251 human cases nationwide -- and 11 deaths -- the median age of human infections was 54 years, with the age range of human cases of three to 94 years, the CDC said. Such statistics as of Monday were not immediately available.

The virus is most dangerous for children, the elderly and people with weak immune systems.

Symptoms, which usually occur seven to 10 days after infection, generally are similar to the flu -- fever, chills, headache, neck pain and aching muscles. In rare cases, the virus can cause swelling of the brain and prove fatal.