Abstract Background Human Parechovirus (HPeV) infections can cause sepsis and meningoencephalitis in infants. In order to improve our knowledge of the consequences of HPeV infections in young children, the incidence, clinical spectrum and short-term outcome among HPeV-infected infants were investigated retrospectively. Methods/results Presence of HPeV RNA was investigated by PCR in cerebrospinal fluid from 327 children aged 0-12 months sampled between 2014 and 2017. Eighty-one were infected with HPeV and included in the study. Based on clinical assessment, they were divided into three groups; 1) HPeV was presumed cause of disease (N = 35), 2) HPeV could have contributed to or could have been considered as cause of disease (N = 24), and 3) HPeV was not considered cause of disease (N = 22). Infection with HPeV type 3 was common in all groups (N = 54) and most children were younger than 3 months (n = 63). The children in group 1 had either meningoencephalitis (ME) (N = 20), viral sepsis (VS) (N = 9) or non-severe viral infection (NSVI) (N = 6). The youngest were more prone to develop ME while the slightly older children had symptoms of VS or NSVI (p=<0.05). Eleven had symptom onset within two days after birth. Two infants diagnosed with sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) were HPeV infected when tested postmortem. Conclusion HPeV infections were identified in 25% of children with suspected CNS infection. The clinical presentation of those infected with HPeV varied with age. HPeV infections may be associated with SIDS, although this is not well studied. The results suggest that HPeV infections may be underdiagnosed in young infants.