title: Epidemiologic, socioeconomic, and clinical factors associated with severity of respiratory syncytial virus infection in previously healthy infants.
abstract: We prospectively quantified disease severity associated with epidemiologic and socioeconomic parameters as well as the clinical factors in 195 previously healthy infants with confirmed respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. Infants were enrolled into three subgroups according to disease severity: outpatients (82 patients), inpatients (100 patients), and intensive care unit patients (13 patients). Epidemiologic parameters such as gestational age, birth weight, chronologic age at presentation, and gender as well as socioeconomic factors such as ethnic origin, family history of asthma, exposure to cigarette smoke, number of family members, presence of pets at home, breast-feeding, and day-care attendance were not found to predict the severity of RSV illness in previously healthy infants. Our results emphasize the complexity of predicting disease severity in previously healthy infants with RSV infection and suggest that other parameters such as host genetic background might explain the clinical variability.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Dana Children's Hospital, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
authors.forename: Raz
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Somech
authors.forename: Guy
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tal
authors.forename: Eli
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gilad
authors.forename: Avigdor
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mandelberg
authors.forename: Asher
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tal
authors.forename: Ilan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Dalal
mesh_terms: D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D011446:Prospective Studies; D018357:Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infections / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors