What parents need to know about the local rise in hand-foot-and-mouth disease cases

Doctors are seeing an increase in hand-foot-and-mouth disease among kids in Western Pennsylvania. But there are ways to prevent it from infecting your family.

Hand-foot-and-mouth disease is primarily found in kids under age 5, but anyone can get it. Allegheny Health Network Pediatrician Dr. Michael Petrosky says doctors may be seeing more cases of it for many reasons, including a new viral strain circulating this season.

It is more typical this time of year, because of the weather and kids going back to school. Parents are also becoming more aware of what the disease looks like.

Once parents have knowledge of the virus, Dr. Petrosky says, “if you have that in the back of your mind, you may notice that one little rash that you wouldn’t look for before.” 

Hand-foot-and-mouth disease is a virus that can also cause a fever and sore throat, but it’s the rash that can make it easier to diagnose.

“Usually, it’s on the soles of the feet, palms of the hands, around the mouth, or even inside the mouth,” Dr. Petrosky says. “But most often, it’s not at all three places at the same time. So you could just have it on your hands and still have hand-foot-and-mouth disease.”

The virus is spread through open blisters and also saliva, which means it can spread through coughing.  You can prevent getting if you:

• wash your hands often
• avoid touching your face
• clean and disinfect surfaces
• and avoid close contact with infected people.

Doctors say if you recognize the rash on your child, there’s no medication to cure hand-foot-and-mouth disease. But you can use Tylenol and ibuprofen to help with a fever and sore throat.

“The biggest complication we can see from this is just being dehydrated,” Dr. Petrosky says.  “If your throat’s sore because of the blisters in your mouth, you may not want to eat or drink as much. So if you’re not (eating or drinking), if it hurts to swallow, we want to make sure kids are staying hydrated.”

Hand-foot-and-mouth disease usually lasts about a week.  Doctors say you can usually send your child back to school if they’ve been fever-free without medication for 24 hours and if the rash is improving.

For more information on hand-foot-and-mouth disease, the CDC has more details here: https://www.cdc.gov/hand-foot-mouth/about/index.html.

Photo at top of story by Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash.