article_snippet: Last summer, more than 1,000 children and teens across the country were hospitalized with symptoms that appeared to be caused by a particularly nasty strain of enterovirus.
article_snippet: Doctors caring for the sick children  connected the illness early on to a pathogen called enterovirus  D-68.
article_snippet: Enteroviruses are a type of virus that use a single strand of RNA to replicate Enteroviruses inside the cells of mammals.
article_snippet: Among other enteroviruses are polio, the virus that causes Hand Foot and Mouth disease along with others that cause a range of respiratory illnesses.
article_snippet: Enterovirus D-68 is among the most recently idenfitied and was first spotted in California in 1962.
article_snippet: Enterovirus D-68 can cause mild to severe respiratory illness and is likely to be spread by inhaling virus particles when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or touches a surface.
article_snippet: In previous years only small numbers of EV-D68 infections have been reported but that has increased during 2014, according to the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
article_snippet: The incidence of infections has fallen off considerably since October but public health officials warn that infections seem to spike during the late summer and autumn.
article_snippet: Researchers now suggest that the children were infected with a mutated form of D-68, which first appeared four years ago.
article_snippet: With enterovirus season just a few months away in late summer, researchers are saying it's extremely important that more work be done to unravel the B1 mystery and make grounds to develop a vaccine to fight the dangerous virus.
article_snippet: The Children's Hospital Colorado continues to monitor the patients infected with enterovirus, and have even set up a special clinic for the victims.
highlights_snippet: mutated strain of enterovirus
highlights_snippet: D-68 first popped up four years ago and has coding differences that make mutated strain of enterovirus D-68 similar to polio .
  