Outbreak of Adenovirus Infection in the Portsmouth Naval Command, 1958

Abstract

The Commission on Acute Respiratory Diseases of the United States Army (1946) postulated the existence of a special disease of the upper respiratory tract affecting chiefly young recruits during their first four weeks of military training. A virus agent was eventually isolated by Hilleman and Werner (1954) from cases of atypical pneumonia and acute respiratory disease, and found to be similar to a " masked " virus recovered from adenoid tissue removed at operation from young children (Rowe et al., 1953).