Is Infectious mononucleosis capable of becoming epidemic or pandemic. Explain?

EBV, the cause of infectious mononucleosis, has always been widespread throughout the world. Nearly everyone gets infected with the virus at some stage of their lives, the vast majority of people as young children.

It usually only causes the disease infectious mononucleosis if you first get infected as an adolescent. Younger children usually get infected asymptomatically.

Mono is mainly a disease of people in the affluent West. Most people in third world countries get infected as young children, and so they don't get sick.

In most communities EBV is already pandemic, and has been for as long as we've known about it. You could only get an epidemic of mono if you had a group of adolescents most of whom haven't already had the virus.

I had mono once. The worst that happened to me was I had to sleep a lot and miss weeks of school.

If it did become widespread, the worst we could expect is a slow down in the economy due to a lot of people having to take a lot of sick days off.

Mmmm...okay, I'll bite. I would have to, to infect you with mono.

Basically, that is your answer. Infectious mononucleosis (unlike, for example, influenza) requires close contact in order to infect others. It is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus*, which is in no way a new human virus (unlike, for example, hantavirus or West Nile virus) or one that appears to mutate itself rapidly (unlike, for example, HIV). And EBV isn't particularly virulent. It doesn't kill (unlike the Ebola virus).

One another of these traits--very easy, airborne or casual contact transmission OR new ability to infect humans OR quick mutation into a more virulent form OR natural virulence--would be required for anything that most infectious disease specialists would term 'epidemic' or 'pandemic'. Or some combination of the above.

EBV *is* sometimes associated with a type of cancer called Burkitt's lymphoma. If you wanted to write a scary movie plot, you could suppose that a new mutation of EBV arose that caused a very fast-moving form of Burkitt's.

But there's no evidence that this will happen in real life. ;-)

*Cytomegalovirus or CMV also can cause a syndrome that is called 'mono', but usually what is meant is EBV.