Do you have a chronic sore throat or a constantly congested nose that persist for years? Do you have anxiety, depression, a loss of desires, blunted emotions or fatigue? Did you notice the onset of a crêpe paper-like fine wrinkling of your skin (only appears in people older than about 30 to 35 years)?
There is a virus going about, spreading from person-to-person by normal social contact or kissing, that causes these chronic symptoms, as well as many others.
The main persistent symptoms of this virus are the following (you may not have all of them):
Early Symptoms (first few weeks of infection):
- Chronic sore throat which eventually becomes mild, but never fully clears up.
- Constantly congested nose/sinuses/post-nasal drip with unusually thick mucus.
Additional Symptoms (appear after a few months):
- Depression and low mood.
- Generalized anxiety disorder with significant anxiety states.
- Psychological changes and cognition disruptions.
- Loss of desires and sense of pleasure (anhedonia); loss of libido.
- Social withdrawal — escaping social activities more and more.
- Loss of drive and motivation.
- Memory problems both short-term and long-term.
- Word recall problems — transient difficulties in recalling words or names.
- Unusual sleepiness and a tendency to fall asleep more.
- Chronic fatigue — a notable loss of energy.
- Stomach aches and pains with stomach and bowel rumbling, and excessive gas.
- Pins and needles (paresthesias) body-wide, especially in the legs.
- Receding gums — a sudden onset of periodontitis, with brown tartar appearing on teeth.
Later Symptoms (appear at approximately 12 to 18 months):
- Wrinkling of the skin with fine, crêpe paper-like wrinkles (crepey skin).
- Weight gain, mainly on the belly (abdominal fat).
- Subtle loss of hearing acuity, making you slower in identifying environmental sounds.
- Emotional frailty, emotional lability, emotional flatness; irritability.
- Less frequently: tinnitus; blurred vision; occasional transient joint pains (arthralgia).
Other Possible Sequelae:
- Pericarditis, myocarditis and sudden heart attack in the previously healthy.
- Viral meningitis/encephalitis (can appear months after the initial infection).
The viral infection typically begins in its acute phase with a gastrointestinal illness with diarrhea and vomiting, lasting 1 or 2 days. Or sometimes the infection begins with a sore throat that may take many weeks to get better, and may never fully disappear. Then after the acute phase is over, over the next few months, the above physical and mental symptoms may manifest on the timescales indicated.
I named it the “chronic sore throat / mood virus”, but in fact only about a third of those catching this virus will develop the chronic mild sore throat symptom, and only about 10% get substantial mood changes or other mental health issues.
I caught this virus in 2003, and after it infected me, it slowly transmitted to and infected many friends and family. Several of those who caught this virus from me developed severe generalised anxiety disorder or permanent major depression. I speculate here that this virus may be responsible for the large increase in anxiety disorders that has occurred the last few decades. Several other previously healthy people were hit with sudden heart attacks when catching this virus.
Some viruses, such as cold viruses, are cleared from the body when the acute infection is over. Other viruses may persist in the body after the acute infection, but in a dormant latent state. However this chronic sore throat / mood virus is not cleared, and appears to continue indefinitely as an ongoing but low-level infection.
Because this virus continues as a persistent low-level infection, infected individuals can remain contagious for years or indefinitely (I have observed that people with this virus can infect others even years after their acute infection is over).
This virus is found in the saliva and nasal secretions, and gradually transmits from person-to-person through normal household contact. Once one person in a household contracts the virus, I have seen that most other household members will catch it from them within a few months to a year. Do to forming a persistent low-level infection, viral transmission to other people by normal social contact is slow, but inevitable. But this virus can be spread more quickly through French kissing, since it is present in the saliva: if you French kiss a person with this virus, you are likely to catch it immediately.
This virus has an unusually rapid incubation period: from the moment you catch this virus (often picked up when French kissing an infected person, or eating a meal with an infected person), it takes around 12 hours for the first symptoms to appear (these initial symptoms are usually a sore throat or a gastrointestinal upset). I observed this fast incubation period on multiple occasions.
Several years after I caught this virus, it had slowly spread to more than 30 friends and family, and many of the above symptoms manifested to varying degrees in these infected people. The more severe mental and physical symptoms only appeared in around 10% of the infected people. Whereas 90% of people catching this virus manifest much milder (but nevertheless persistent) symptoms. The milder symptoms that most people develop are detailed here.
As we will see later, this chronic sore throat / mood virus is very likely a virulent strain of Coxsackie B4 virus, as my blood tests showed persistently very high antibody levels to coxsackievirus B4 (CVB4). Three other people in this website’s comment section with very similar symptoms also all tested positive for CVB4 using the sensitive coxsackievirus B antibody neutralization test detailed on the FAQ page. If you think you might have this virus, and want to get tested yourself, see the FAQ page.
A new CVB4 was actually found circulating in China in a 2014 study (they found a completely new genotype of CVB4), and I wonder if this might be the virus I caught.
Note: one theory I have is that my virus could be the same as the yinzibing virus that emerged in China around 2003 (the so-called Chinese HIV-like virus), because its symptoms are very similar. The yinzibing virus can cause an AIDS-like deterioration in health in some people, yet so far Chinese researchers have not identified or isolated yinzibing.
How I Caught the Virus and How it Infected My Whole Body
This infection began with a bad sore throat that I caught in the summer of 2003. Being in excellent physical shape at that time, I thought nothing of it. I had no rash on my body, though the back of my throat and the rear arch of my soft palete were red and inflamed (see image), looking a bit like a herpangina sore throat, but without pain, and without the blisters and ulcers that normally accompany herpangina. I paid little attention to it. 
Several weeks later, however, I noticed that my sore throat had not cleared up, and instead, the infection started spreading. This was strange, because I was pretty healthy at that point, HIV negative, usually fighting off colds and infections quickly. Yet this sore throat would not go away.
Within a month, this virus had spread to my nose, causing a chronic inflammatory feeling in my nose and sinuses (in others who caught the virus, it triggered the production of unusually thick mucus, with this nasal mucus congestion becoming a permanent long-term symptom; a constantly congested and stuffy nose like this can be classified as chronic sinusitis, chronic rhinitis, post-nasal drip, or rhinorrhea).
Next my lungs became infected, leading to a mild chest infection and a dry cough, but this lung infect cleared up quickly. Soon after this, the virus reached my stomach, which started aching a little and producing gas and bubbling sounds, which created some belching. My rumbling, aching stomach became a chronic — but thankfully intermittent — symptom. The virus also spread to my intestines, where it started produced odorless intestinal gas (odorless flatulence), bowel rumbling, and bowel bloating (which all became long-term of permanent symptoms).
Note: this gradual spread of this virus from organ to organ occurs after the acute initial infection has cleared up. So this virus continues to infect new organs well after the acute phase is over; and it thus becomes clear this virus can create a persistent long-term but low-level infection.
After Two Months, Mental Symptoms Started to Appear
At the 2 month stage, this viral infection manifested a distinct new phase: intense mental state changes suddenly appeared. These disturbing psychological symptoms started with a feeling of being very tense, anxious and uncomfortable, especially in social company (even with good friends and family). This I later realized was generalized anxiety disorder, caused by the virus.
I also found I became weak mentally: my strength of mind seemed to disintegrate, and I became frail and feeble emotionally, as if I’d lost my emotional strength and backbone. Being with other people seemed to further perturb my mind, and so it became quite unpleasant to socialize.
As a result of these psychological changes, I started avoiding social contact more and more. Additionally, just reading or listening to facts and ideas created strong tensions in my mind, as I tried to process the information. I could not handle facts and details, even from a book or television, without mental tension arising. This is more or less psychosis. As a coping strategy, I limited my time with people and information to help reduce this unpleasant mental tension.
Then I quickly became very apathetic. The apathy was towards all sorts of tasks and activities. My normal pro-active ‘can do’ attitude was replaced by a ‘not interested’ feeling — which is totally out of character. I am normally a motivated, enthusiastic and organized person. However, as this infection and its psychological effects progressed, I began to lose interest in the usual pleasures of life (a condition called anhedonia), including pleasure from sex, and also lost the desire for sex (low libido). My enthusiasm, drive and motivation just evaporated away.
I then began to experience some short-term memory difficulties, and inability to concentrate which caused problems in my day-to-day activities. There was some intelligence loss, particularly in my verbal, spelling and grammatical skills, and I found it a lot harder to recall words, people’s names and other information from my long-term memory. Thus I found myself becoming less articulate, often mispronouncing words, and forgetting names. Additionally, my physical body movements started getting a little more clumsy; I seemed to become physically less coordinated.
The next symptoms I experienced were more and more fatigue and sleepiness (hypersomnia). I seemed to fall asleep all the time, even when I was not that tired. As this sleepiness and fatigue progressed, wondered if this virus was beginning to precipitate chronic fatigue syndrome. A large loss of appetite appeared at this point also.
To sum up: I became: anxious, depressed, avoiding social contact, unmotivated, emotionally frail, confused, forgetful, clumsy, uncoordinated, with a dulled intellect, decreased verbal intelligence, an impaired memory, and increased fatigue.
How the Virus Spread to My Family and Friends
At this point I noticed that the virus was spreading to friends and family (and then later to their friends and families), but this happened quite slowly. For example, I would infect someone new only every month or two (just by normal household and social contact). That newly-infected person would initially come down with the same herpangina-like sore throat symptom, and/or a gastrointestinal upset (gastroenteritis), and then in most cases, they would progress to similar long-term physical and mental symptoms, though usually much milder symptoms than mine.
In around 90% of those who catch this virus, the mental symptoms are mild, what you might call subclinical symptoms. Only in around 10% of individuals who catch the virus do the more severe long-term mental symptoms like anxiety and depression appear. For most people, after catching this virus, there seems to be a delay of a month or two before the first psychological and cognitive mental symptoms begin to manifest.
I heard previously normal people who caught this virus reporting that their “mind is not functioning right”. And when this virus hits a whole family, as a result of the mental changes it induces, family members can become a little more emotionally distant from each other, with family relations in general turning to a functional pragmatism.
Back in 2007 when this website was first published, I predicted that there may be a global epidemic of anxiety and depression in the decades to come, caused by this virus. In this is exactly what we are observing now, with studies such as this one finding that diagnoses of anxiety have tripled in young adults since 2008.
Some people who caught this virus became a little less interested in social interaction. I noticed that I lost some of the pleasure that normally arises from seeing friends, and from making new friendships.
After 4 Months, I Developed Constant Pins and Needles, Lost My Sense of Smell, and My Gums Started Receding
Four months after first catching this virus, a new symptom appeared: a pins and needles or skin crawling sensation, first in my legs, but soon spreading across my entire body. There were constant sharp prickling sensations everywhere, which felt like they were located just beneath my skin. The severity of this prickling sensation varied from one day to the next. These type of sensations are called paresthesias. Also at this stage, I also noticed the onset of a very mild loss of sensation and tactile sensitivity in the skin throughout my body.
The next symptom to arise was a severe loss of smell (a condition known as anosmia). My sense of smell just vanished.
During some weeks, my sense of smell would return slightly, but then the next week it would disappear again. It continued in these up-and-down cycles for two years or so. However, after several years, my olfactory capabilities slowly improved, but did not return to full form for at least 5 years.
My oral health was then affected: my gums, previously extremely healthy and pink, began receding quite noticeably. Lots of brown tartar was suddenly deposited on my previously perfectly white teeth. No matter how much I brushed it away, the tartar still came back. Along with this increased tartar formation, and in spite of frequent tooth brushing, new dental caries (tooth decay/cavities) suddenly appeared. Previous to this, my oral health was excellent. Therefore, it seems I developed periodontitis (receding gums) from this virus within a matter of months.
In this picture of my teeth, my gums previously covered the brown tartar areas you see at the bottom of the teeth. But after I caught the virus, the gum line receded, and this brown tartar was deposited on the uncovered areas of the teeth.
Possibly this gum disease might be a manifestation of the temporary immune-weakening effect this virus seems to create in the body, allowing bacteria to thrive and colonize the oral region (several people experienced local opportunistic bacterial infections requiring antibiotics to treat soon after catching this virus). In addition, gum tissue can be directly eroded by connective tissue-dissolving enzymes (such as MMP-9) that the immune system secretes when fighting viral infections.
Next, I noticed my vision began to deteriorate. So I had my eyes tested; nothing appeared to be wrong with my eyes or my ophthalmic prescription. My vision seemed “smudged”, rather than optically out of focus. For example, looking at black text on a white page or computer screen, the letters are focussed, yet are slightly “smudged” on the white background.
After a Year With the Virus, Skin Wrinkling Symptoms Began to Manifest
About 12 to 18 months after first catching this virus, more strange symptoms manifested: a fine, crêpe paper-like wrinkling of the skin (crepey skin) began appearing all over my body. This fine wrinkled skin tends to first appear on the tops of the hands (see picture). The skin also shows a slight red, blotchy quality beneath its surface (but this is barely noticeable). I am guessing that this wrinkling is the result of collagen or elastin loss or damage under the skin, caused by the viral infection (again, probably due to connective tissue-dissolving enzymes such as MMP-9).
This crêpey wrinkling is certainly not normal skin aging; its appearance is distinct from normal aging, and moreover, it manifests very quickly, within a year or two. However, the strange skin wrinkling caused by this virus is usually only noticeable in people older than 30 to 35 or so; younger people don’t seem to get it. And even for people 35 to 60 say, this crêpe paper-like wrinkling is only slight. 
In those older than around 60, though, this virally-induced skin wrinkling manifests more significantly, and in addition, in the more elderly the skin also becomes loose and sagging. Searching through known dermatological conditions, the closest fit to my skin’s appearance is found in a disease called mid-dermal elastolysis.
More details of this skin wrinkling and skin sagging symptom are to be found on this page of this website.
Another symptom that manifested at this 12 to 18 month stage was weak legs and a weak pelvic girdle. My pelvis-to-leg joints feel a little spongy and lacking in normal firmness. It is possible that the infection is damaging the connective tissue in the ligaments of my pelvis, thus weakening the ligaments. The result is a slightly less than sure walking gait, and a bit of a shuffling gait. This leg weakness and pelvic laxity is constant: it does not vary hour to hour, nor day to day. There is no loss of strength or spasm in the muscles either (except occasional cramps in my calf muscles).
Beginning at the 18 month stage, weight gain appears in some people, mainly in the belly area. This abdominal fat can appear even in people who were previously athletically lean and muscular. Note that the abdominal fat build-up can be caused by reduced growth hormone output, and/or the development of resistance to the hormones insulin or leptin (leptin resistance often arises in conditions of chronic inflammation).
After 2 or 3 years with this virus, further skin symptoms appear. In a V-shaped area on the upper chest just under the neck (the precise area exposed when wearing a V-neck jumper) the skin becomes a red/pink in color, and the skin texture in this area gets quite thick and oily/waxy (and this was not caused by sun exposure). The color of this upper chest rash is that of a heliotrope rash. Such a V-shaped red rash on the chest can be a sign of dermatomyositis, which is linked to coxsackievirus B.
In addition, seborrheic keratosis (seborrheic warts) may appear on the skin: these are benign brown spots looking similar to moles. See this picture I took of one the seborrheic keratosis spots that appeared on my skin. My seborrheic keratosis was diagnosed by a dermatologist.
Transient Immune Weakening, Heart Attacks and Viral Encephalitis
This virus generally appears to cause very slight temporary immune system weakening, and this can result in opportunistic infections arising, for example: fungal skin infections, urinary tract infections, ear infections, tooth infections with toothache, etc (all requiring antibiotics or antimicrobials to clear). The highest immunosuppression seems to occur in the first few years of infection with this virus; but after that, these opportunistic infections abate.
Several sudden heart attacks occurred in my group of 30+ friends and family, soon after they were infected with this virus, one of which was fatal. All of these heart attacks happened in people who were previously healthy, with no prior heart conditions. One individual who caught this virus not only had a heart attack, but soon after also developed myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the heart sac) lasting for many months.
I myself experienced an episode of viral encephalitis a couple of years after catching this virus, which I think was very likely caused by this virus (given its observed propensity to slowly infect additional organs in the body over time). This encephalitis caused some mild brain damage, and after the encephalitis, I then developed chronic fatigue syndrome (myalgic encephalomyelitis).
We will see that my virus is likely coxsackievirus B4, and enteroviruses such as coxsackievirus B are commonly associated with heart attacks (enterovirus is found in 40% of all fatal heart attacks), 1 as well as being a known cause of myocarditis 1 and a common cause of aseptic meningitis and encephalitis.
Summary of the Symptoms This Virus Can Cause
I observed that once one person in a household catches this virus, it will slowly but inexorably spread to all other household members, though it usually takes a few months to a year before everyone in the home gets infected. So the contagiousness of this virus is relatively low, in both the acute and chronic phases of the infection.
Generally, once an individual catches this virus, they are not quite themselves anymore. However, there is a range of individual responses to this virus: about 10% of people contracting this virus experience disturbing and distressing mental symptoms like anxiety, depression and anhedonia; the rest are more lucky, and their mental symptoms are much milder and subclinical.
Myself, my family and my friends who were infected have had this virus for two decades now, and judging by the permanence of the symptoms it causes, it is apparent that this viral infection is not cleared from the body and remains as a chronic low-level ongoing infection.
The following table lists the symptoms I observed in myself and others as a result of this viral infection. Generally, I have only listed symptoms when at least two people infected with this virus have manifested them; this is just to help avoid the possibility of listing any coincidental symptoms appearing in the infected people that were not caused by this virus.
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– COGNITIVE SYMPTOMS –
“Tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon — the inability to retrieve a word or name from memory during conversation. – MOOD SYMPTOMS –
Depression and low mood. – NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOMS –
Subtle loss of hearing acuity is noticed in younger people, meaning that it becomes a little more difficult to identify environmental sounds, and interestingly, more difficult to sense their exact spatial location. – RESPIRATORY AND ORAL SYMPTOMS –
Herpangina-like sore throat (during prodrome) where there are papules, but no blisters or ulcers. – IMMUNE SYMPTOMS – Immunosuppressive — during the first two or three years with this viral infection, more local bacterial infections (requiring antibiotic treatment) may arise due to slightly weakened immunity. |
– GASTROINTESTINAL SYMPTOMS –
Gastroenteritis (can appear for one day during prodrome). – SKIN SYMPTOMS –
Wrinkling of the skin all over the body, with unusual, fine-textured crêpe paper-like wrinkles. – HEART AND CIRCULATION SYMPTOMS –
Myocarditis, pericarditis, and sudden heart attack in the previously healthy. – MUSCLE AND JOINT SYMPTOMS –
Weak legs and hips — the legs and pelvic girdle feel a little weak and slack in my case. – MISCELLANEOUS SYMPTOMS –
Increased hair loss (alopecia). |
This Virus is Likely an Enterovirus
None of the 10 or so medical professionals I saw were able to identify this disease or the pathogen causing it; but one infectious disease and ME/CFS expert I communicated with, Dr John Chia, said that based on symptoms, the pathogen I caught is probably an enterovirus, such as a coxsackievirus B.
Certainly this pathogen is likely to be a virus (rather than a bacterium, fungus or protozoan), as 3 separate bacterial throat swab cultures my doctors conducted (one at a university hospital infectious disease center), showed negative results. Furthermore, stronger evidence that my pathogen is viral comes from its unusually rapid incubation period of around 12 hours; few bacteria can incubate this fast, and the bacterial species than can are easily detectable in a bacterial culture. Thus analysis of the incubation period suggests we are almost certainly dealing with a virus.
I was tested for different pathogens, and my test results showed persistently high antibody levels to coxsackievirus B4, even more than a decade after I first caught the virus, suggesting an active ongoing low-level infection with CVB4. This blood test data, along with other evidence provided on this page, indicates coxsackievirus B4 is most likely the identity of the virus described on this website.
Coxsackievirus B4 is a common virus; but I speculate I may have caught a more virulent strain of CVB4. Indeed, a completely new CVB4 genotype called genotype V was discovered in China in 2014; I wonder if a new viral variant such as this might be my virus.
Coxsackievirus B also fits the persistent infection characteristics of the virus I caught. In the last two decades, it has been discovered that certain enteroviruses such as coxsackievirus B and echovirus are able to form chronic low-level ongoing infections inside human cells. This chronic intracellular form of the virus is known as a non-cytolytic enterovirus infection. Non-cytolytic enterovirus is now known to be the cause of chronic CVB myocarditis (CVB infection of the heart muscle), an illness which some people who caught my virus developed.
A new virus causing similar symptoms to my virus emerged in China in around 2003, see here: new HIV-like virus (yinzibing virus) in China. My virus and the yinzibing virus might be the same, as both share many symptoms; but there are one or two symptoms which are different (see here for a comparison of symptoms). Many people in China (and indeed in other countries around the world) have suffered horrible mental symptoms of anxiety, depression and anhedonia after catching the yinzibing virus.
Note: there are many causes of chronic sore throat; so your chronic sore throat is unlikely to be caused by this virus, unless you have very similar symptoms. So for anyone with a sore throat for a few days: don’t panic, it is probably not this virus.
Note: gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), aka acid reflux, seems to be a bit of a wastebasket diagnosis given when the causes of a chronic sore throat cannot be found. So if your ENT specialist told you that your virally-triggered persistent sore throat is due to acid reflux, you may want to be a little skeptical of that diagnosis.
Further Information
If you are suffering from the anxiety symptoms this virus causes in some people, the anti-anxiety treatment detailed on the Treatments page of this website has proved effective in treating these symptoms.
If you are experiencing high levels of persistent fatigue and brain fog (trouble concentrating and thinking) after catching this virus, then you may have developed myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) from this virus, a condition which is detailed on the ME/CFS Info page. For the fatigue and brain fog, I found high dose selenium on an empty stomach reasonably effective. Selenium has been shown in studies to help control coxsackievirus B infection.
Note however that chronic fatigue syndrome is linked to several viruses, including coxsackievirus B, echovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, HHV-6, parvovirus B19 (and more recently to SARS-CoV-2). Thus if you developed the symptoms of ME/CFS after catching a virus, any one of those viruses could have been responsible.
Should you have similar symptoms and wish to share your experience, you can leave a comment here.
Author: “Hip”. About: The author studied the physical sciences, and studied neuroscience at postgraduate level.
First Published: May 2007. Last Updated: May 2024.
Chronic Sore Throat / Mood Virus 
