Viral etiologies of lower respiratory tract infections among Egyptian children under five years of age

BMC Infectious Diseases

Research Article

Amani El Kholy¹  Hanaa El-Karaksy²  Aymen S Yassin³  Madgy A Amin³  Emad W Mohareb⁴  Fouad G Youssef⁴  Caroline F Shafik⁴ 

[1] Faculty of Medicine, Department of Clinical Pathology, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt;Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt;Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt;US Naval Medical Research Unit No.3, 11517, Cairo, Egypt;

关键词: Egypt;    Direct fluorescence assay;    Lower respiratory tract infections;    Pediatric;    Polymerase chain reaction;    Respiratory viruses;    Shell vial culture;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2334-12-350

 received in 2012-01-23, accepted in 2012-11-14,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundLower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) are responsible for a considerable number of deaths among children, particularly in developing countries. In Egypt and the Middle East region, there is a lack of data regarding the viral causes of LRTI. In this study, we aimed to identify the relative prevalence of various respiratory viruses that contribute to LRTIs in young children. Although, nucleic acid-based methods have gained importance as a sensitive tool to determine the viral infections, their use is limited because of their prohibitive cost in low-income countries. Therefore, we applied three different laboratory methods, and presented the different virus prevalence patterns detected by each method.MethodsWe collected nasopharyngeal aspirate samples, demographic data and, clinical data from 450 children under five years of age who presented with LRTI at Abou El Reesh hospital in Cairo during a one-year period. To identify the viral causes of the LRTI we used direct fluorescence assay, real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (rt-RT-PCR), and shell vial culture. We tested for eight major respiratory viruses.ResultsTwo hundred sixty-nine patients (59.9%) had a viral infection, among which 10.8% had a co-infection with two or more viruses. By all three methods, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was the most predominant, and parainfluenza virus type 2 (HPIV-2), influenza B virus (FLUBV) were the least predominant. Other viral prevalence patterns differed according to the detection method used. The distribution of various viruses among different age groups and seasonal distribution of the viruses were also determined.ConclusionsRSV and human adenovirus were the most common respiratory viruses detected by rt-RT-PCR. Co-infections were found to be frequent among children and the vast majority of co-infections were detected by nucleic acid-based detection assays.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Shafik et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012