Podcast 877: Viral Respiratory Infections in Children

Emergency Medical Minute

Contributor: Jared Scott MD

Educational Pearls

• A recently published study assessed the burden of respiratory viruses in a longitudinal cohort of children from 0 to 2 years of age

• The children in the study received nasal swab PCR testing weekly to determine infectivity

• They were also monitored for symptoms via weekly text surveys

• The study differentiated between infection and illness by defining an acute respiratory illness (ARI) as fever ≥38°C or cough.

• The median infectivity rate was 9.4 viral infections per child per year

• The median illness rate was 3.3 ARIs per child per year

• The most common etiological viruses isolated from the nasal samples were rhinovirus and enterovirus

• Most infections were asymptomatic or mild

References

1. Teoh, Z., Conrey, S., McNeal, M., Burrell, A., Burke, R. M., Mattison, C., McMorrow, M., Payne, D. C., Morrow, A. L., & Staat, M. A. (2023). Burden of Respiratory Viruses in Children Less Than 2 Years Old in a Community-based Longitudinal US Birth Cohort. Clinical infectious diseases: an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 77(6), 901–909. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciad289

Summarized by Jorge Chalit, OMSII | Edited by Meg Joyce & Jorge Chalit, OMSII