Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of respiratory viral infections in children in Shanghai, China

Abstract

Acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs) due to various viruses are not only the most common causes of upper and lower respiratory infection but are also major causes of morbidity and mortality in children. In this study, we investigated the prevalence and clinical characteristics of children with virus-related ARTIs and determined the spectrum of respiratory viruses and their correlation with meteorological variables in Jiading District, Shanghai, China. Nasopharyngeal swabs from 2819 children with ARTIs were collected from August 2011 to December 2014, and used for detection of respiratory viruses by multiplex RT-PCR. Seventeen respiratory viruses were detected among 691 (24.5 %) of 2819 patients. The highest prevalence of respiratory viruses was detected in the age group of less than 1 year (29.0 %), and the prevalence decreased with age. This suggests that children less than one year old are the most susceptible to infection. Influenza virus (IFV) was the most frequently detected virus (5.8 %), followed by parainfluenza virus (PIV) (5.7 %), enterovirus (EV) (4.3 %), and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) (3.6 %). Statistical analysis showed that epidemics of IFV, PIV and EV had distinct seasonal variations. Mean monthly temperature appeared to be the only meteorological factor associated with IFV and PIV infection. These findings will provide valuable information for decision-making, prevention and treatment of ARTIs in children.

Comparison of viral and epidemiological profiles of hospitalized children with severe acute respiratory infection in Beijing and Shanghai, China

“…Our study is the first to compare respiratory viral infections and their epidemiology in hospitalized children with SARI in Beijing and Shanghai. Of the 700 patients included in the study, 78.1% tested positive for at least one virus; this rate was higher than that reported by previous studies (range, 34.6-70.3%) [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. This finding may be mainly explained by some differences in the SARI case inclusion criteria, since additional criteria in our study were a normal or low leukocyte count or indrawing of the lower chest wall.…”

“…Either the total or age groupmatched positive rates of RSV, HCoV, and HMPV significantly differed in Beijing and Shanghai (P < 0.05). In addition, a comparison of our data with those from other studies collected during the same period in the same locations revealed that our infection rates differed from those of the other studies [15,19,25]. Differences in detection methods and primers, sample collection, and subject populations may account for this disparity.…”

Respiratory Tract Viral Infections and Coinfections Identified by Anyplex™ II RV16 Detection Kit in Pediatric Patients at a Riyadh Tertiary Care Hospital

“…Respiratory virus infections are a major public health problem, due to the ease of spread and considerable morbidity and mortality. The association between respiratory tract infections and different viral pathogens has been reported to vary between 40% and 90% [1][2][3][4][5] globally.…”

A Mismatch-Tolerant RT-Quantitative PCR: Application to Broad-Spectrum Detection of Respiratory Syncytial Virus

“…To evaluate the performance of the novel assay, 40 nasopharyngeal swabs collected from children with ARTIs in our previous studies were used [29,30]. Among these samples, half were previously detected as RSV-positive and half as RSV-negative using our in-house multiplex RT-qPCR method.…”