Clinical virology: An oxymoron or a useful tool?

Abstract

If a patient sees a physician because the patient has this, that or the other signs and symptoms and is told he or she “has a virus infection”, they might begin to wonder whether they have walked or been carried into a shoe repair shop by mistake. Such impromptu diagnoses, even if correct, are neither useful nor inexpensive and one would be better off staying home in bed and getting some rest. The physician should order some sort of lab test that would help focus on what is ailing the patient or, at the very least, what is not. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that he or she could do anything for the patient anyway. A bit of “tincture
of time” is called for in most virus infections. So, excluding the virus infections that can be treated (influenza viruses, herpesviruses, human immunodeficiency virus, respiratory syncytial virus, Lassa virus and a few others), there is not much the physician can do anyway, no matter the viral disease. For the most part, it is a race between the virus and the immune responses, so one is on one’s own. When recovered, at
least one knows one will hopefully not have to deal again with that particular virus.