Parvovirus B19.

N Engl J Med 2004;350:586-97. Copyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. vonne cossart, an australian virologist working in london in the mid-1970s, noted an anomalous reaction of a normal blood donor’s serum (occupying position 19 in plate B) in an assay for hepatitis B. When Cossart excised the line of antigen–antibody precipitation, she saw the particles shown in Figure 1A, and in this way discovered a parvovirus in human blood. 1 With the same technique, antibodies to parvovirus B19 were found in a large proportion of normal adults, indicating that infection is common and probably occurs in childhood. A disease was linked to parvovirus B19 infection by John Pattison and colleagues, who found either virus-specific antibodies or the virus itself in samples from children who had a severe complication of sickle cell disease called transient aplastic crisis. 2 The most common illness caused by parvovirus B19 was identified a few years later, during outbreaks in the United Kingdom of fifth disease, a highly contagious childhood exanthem long suspected of having a viral cause. 3 The virus has also been implicated in several other diseases 4,5