SUBCLINICAL INFECTIOUS MONONUCLEOSIS WITH HEPATITIS

Abstract

THE HIGH prevalence of infectious mononucleosis, especially among the school and army population and young medical personnel, is well attested to by a voluminous literature on the subject.¹In addition to sporadic cases, numerous clinical epidemics have been reported since the first description by West²in 1896 of one in a community in Ohio. However, Halcrow,³in a study of an epidemic of 296 cases in an Emergency Medical Service Hospital in Scotland in 1942, was the first to emphasize the occurrence of cases with hematoserologic evidences of infectious mononucleosis without the usual clinical manifestations. Vander Meer and associates⁴found 340 subclinical cases in an army camp in Wisconsin within a five-month period. Wechsler and associates⁵reported an epidemic in an army post in Texas of 556 cases, of which 112 lacked clinical findings. Since infectious mononucleosis is not usually reported to public-health authorities, its