[Viral respiratory co-infections in pediatric patients admitted for acute respiratory infection and their impact on clinical severity].
BACKGROUND
Respiratory viruses are the leading cause of acute respiratory tract infection (ARI) in children. It has been reported that viral respiratory co-infection could be associated with severe clinical course.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the frequency of viral co-infection in children admitted for AlRI and evaluate whether this co-infection was associated with more severe clinical course.


METHODS
Prospective, descriptive study in pediatric patients who were hospitalized for ARI, with molecular detection of at least 1 respiratory virus in nasopharyngeal sample studied by PCR-Microarray for 17 respiratory viruses.


RESULTS
110 out of 147 patients with detection of > 1 respiratory virus were included. Viral co-infection was detected in 41/110 (37%). 22/110 children (20%) were classified as moderate to severe clinical course and 88/110 (80%) were classified as mild clinical course. In the group of moderate to severe clinical course, viral respiratory co-infection was detected in 6/22 (27.3%), compared to 35/88 (39.8 %) in the mild clinical course group. No statistically significant difference was found regarding the presence of co-infection between groups (p = 0.33).


CONCLUSIONS
We detected high rates of viral co-infection in children with ARI. It was not possible to demonstrate that viral co-infections were related with severe clinical course in hospitalized children.
Centro de Pacientes Críticos Pediátricos, Clínica Las Condes, Santiago, Chile.
Pamela
P
Martínez
Jaime
J
Cordero
Cristián
C
Valverde
Nancy
N
Unanue
Roberto
R
Dalmazzo
Paula
P
Piemonte
Ivonne
I
Vergara
Juan P
JP
Torres
D000208:Acute Disease; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D060085:Coinfection / Q000821:virology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009305:Nasopharynx / Q000821:virology*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012141:Respiratory Tract Infections / Q000821:virology*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014777:Virus Diseases / Q000821:virology*