OBJECTIVE: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza virus, and parainfluenza viruses (PIV) cause significant morbidity in young children. Although only influenza virus infection and illness is currently vaccine-preventable, vaccines are under development for RSV and PIV. We established a prospective, active population-based surveillance network to provide precise estimates of hospitalization rates for viral acute respiratory illness (ARI) in young children and to measure the ...

BACKGROUND: Reducing acute respiratory infection burden in children in Africa remains a major priority and challenge. We analyzed data from population-based infectious disease surveillance for severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) among children <5 years of age in Kibera, a densely populated urban slum in Nairobi, Kenya.

METHODS: Surveillance was conducted among a monthly mean of 5,874 (range = 5,778-6,411) children <5 years old in two contiguous villages in Kibera. Participants had ...

BACKGROUND: The primary role of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in causing infant hospitalizations is well recognized, but the total burden of RSV infection among young children remains poorly defined.

METHODS: We conducted prospective, population-based surveillance of acute respiratory infections among children under 5 years of age in three U.S. counties. We enrolled hospitalized children from 2000 through 2004 and children presenting as outpatients in emergency departments and ...

BACKGROUND: Pneumonia is the leading cause of childhood death in Bangladesh. We conducted a longitudinal study to estimate the incidence of virus-associated pneumonia in children aged <2 years in a low-income urban community in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

METHODS: We followed a cohort of children for two years. We collected nasal washes when children presented with respiratory symptoms. Study physicians diagnosed children with cough and age-specific tachypnea and positive lung findings as ...

Clinical presentations for viral respiratory tract infections are often nonspecific, and a rapid, high-throughput laboratory technique that can detect a panel of common viral pathogens is clinically desirable. We evaluated two multiplex reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) products coupled with microarray-based systems for simultaneous detection of common respiratory tract viral pathogens. The NGEN respiratory virus analyte-specific assay (Nanogen, San Diego, CA) detects influenza A virus ...

OBJECTIVE: The goal was to estimate the influenza disease burden among children with asthma and among healthy children by using active, laboratory-confirmed, population-based surveillance.

METHODS: Children 6 to 59 months of age residing in 3 US counties who were hospitalized with acute respiratory illnesses or fever were enrolled prospectively from 2000 through 2004. Similar children who presented to clinics and emergency departments during 2 of the influenza seasons (2002-2004) were ...

A reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) assay based on automated fluorescent capillary electrophoresis and GeneScan software analysis was developed to detect six common respiratory viruses in clinical specimens from young children. Assays for human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV); human parainfluenza viruses 1, 2, and 3 (HPIV1, -2, and -3, respectively); and influenza A and B viruses were incorporated into a single standard assay format. The optimized assay panel was used to test 470 ...

To determine the diagnostic use of different markers of acute parvovirus B19 infection, serum specimens obtained from 128 persons with erythema infectiosum were tested for specific immunoglobulin G (IgG), IgA, and IgM antibodies by capture enzyme immunoassay (EIA) using Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell-expressed B19 antigen, and tested for circulating B19 DNA by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). A significant rise in specific IgG and IgA antibodies was detected in 87% and 77%, ...

BACKGROUND: The clinical significance of viruses detected in patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is often unclear.

METHODS: We conducted a prospective study to identify the prevalence of 13 viruses in the upper respiratory tract of patients with CAP and concurrently enrolled asymptomatic controls with real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. We compared age-stratified prevalence of each virus between patients with CAP and controls and used multivariable ...

BACKGROUND: Few comprehensive data exist on disease incidence for specific etiologies of acute respiratory illness (ARI) in older children and adults in Africa.

METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: From March 1, 2007, to February 28, 2010, among a surveillance population of 21,420 persons >5 years old in rural western Kenya, we collected blood for culture and malaria smears, nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs for quantitative real-time PCR for ten viruses and three atypical bacteria, and ...

Reverse transcription (RT)-PCR assays have been widely described for use in the diagnosis of human parainfluenza viruses (HPIVs) and other respiratory virus pathogens. However, these assays are mostly monospecific, requiring separate amplifications for each HPIV type. In the present work, we describe multiplex RT-PCR assays that detect and differentiate HPIV serotypes 1, 2, and 3 in a combined reaction. Specifically, a mixture of three pairs of primers to conserved regions of the ...

BACKGROUND: Multipathogen reverse transcription real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) platforms have proven useful in surveillance for acute respiratory illness (ARI) and study of respiratory outbreaks of unknown etiology. The TaqMan(®) Array Card (TAC, Life Technologies™), can simultaneously test 7 clinical specimens for up to 21 individual pathogens (depending on arrangement of controls and use of duplicate wells) by arrayed singleplex RT-qPCR on a single assay card, using minimal amounts of ...

BACKGROUND: We sought to determine whether infections with human coronaviruses (HCoVs) 229E, OC43, HKU1, and NL63 are associated with pneumonia and to define the epidemiology of HCoV infection in rural Thailand.

METHODS: We developed a real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay panel for the recognized HCoV types and compared HCoV infections in patients hospitalized with pneumonia, outpatients with influenza-like illness, and asymptomatic control patients ...

Monoclonal antibodies to the hemagglutinin protein, fusion protein, phosphoprotein, matrix protein, and nucleoprotein of measles virus were evaluated as detector antibodies in capture enzyme immunoassays (EIAs) for the detection of specific serum immunoglobulin G (IgG), IgA, and IgM antibodies to measles virus. A pool of monoclonal antibodies to hemagglutinin protein and nucleoprotein proved optimal and was further evaluated. Specific IgM was detected in 97% of adolescents with clinical ...

BACKGROUND: We detected human bocavirus (HBoV) infection in 4.5% of hospitalized patients with pneumonia in rural Thailand. However, the role of HBoV as a pathogen is unclear.

METHODS: We compared HBoV infection in patients with pneumonia with that in asymptomatic control patients enrolled between 1 September 2004 and 31 August 2005 in the same hospitals in Thailand. We examined outpatients with influenza-like illness for HBoV infection and tested for 13 additional respiratory viruses. ...