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Respiratory syncytial virus: viral load, viral decay, and disease progression in children with bronchiolitis

  • Clinical Microbiology - Research Paper
  • Published:
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Abstract

Acute viral bronchiolitis is the major cause of hospital admissions in children under 2 years of age, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) can be responsible for up to 80% of these infections. We aimed to describe RSV dynamics among hospitalized children with bronchiolitis. Upper respiratory samples of 101 hospitalized patients were collected and submitted to RSV detection by a quantitative real-time RT-PCR to assess viral load (Log10 RNA copies/mL). Seventy-two patients were positive for RSV infection, of which 38 (52.7%) could be followed up until RSV was no longer detected. The first RSV RT-qPCR was carried out on average on the 5th day of symptom onset. Thirty-six patients (94.7%) were still shedding RSV after 7 days, and 9 (23.6%) after 14 days of symptoms onset. Only 2 patients (5.2%) were still shedding RSV after 21 days. Only 7 of the followed patients (18.9%) were submitted to intubation. There was no difference between the viral load of the first collected sample and the viral persistence of patients with comorbidities, who needed intensive care unit and who needed intubation. These data could help understand RSV dynamics and future studies and treatments to come.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Not applicable.

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Funding

JSC and VRGA are fellows of the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Brazil. LKSL and DDC are fellow of the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), Brazil.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinical Virology Laboratory, Infectious Diseases Unit, Medicine Department, São Paulo Federal University, Rua Pedro de Toledo, 781 - Vila Clementino, 15° andar frente, São Paulo, SP, 04039-032, Brazil

    Raí André Silva Watanabe, Jessica Santiago Cruz, Luciano Kleber de Souza Luna, Vitória Rodrigues Guimarães Alves, Danielle Dias Conte & Nancy Bellei

  2. Hospital São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil

    Larissa Lyra, Filipe Nishiyama & Bruno Sanchez Camargo

Authors
  1. Raí André Silva Watanabe
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  2. Jessica Santiago Cruz
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  3. Luciano Kleber de Souza Luna
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  4. Vitória Rodrigues Guimarães Alves
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  5. Danielle Dias Conte
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  6. Larissa Lyra
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  7. Filipe Nishiyama
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  8. Bruno Sanchez Camargo
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  9. Nancy Bellei
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Contributions

RW: data curation, formal analysis, investigation, project administration, visualization, and writing—original draft. JC: data curation and investigation. LdSL: investigation, methodology, validation, and writing—review and editing. VA and DC: investigation. LL, FN, and BC: investigation and formal analysis. NB: conceptualization, funding acquisition, resources, supervision, and writing—review and editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Raí André Silva Watanabe.

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Ethics approval and consent to participate

The following project was approved by the Ethical research committee of the Federal University of Sao Paulo, number 3.009.916, and by CEP/UNIFESP n. 1082/2018; nr. 98573718.0.0000.5505.

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Not applicable.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Responsible Editor: Flavio Guimaraes Fonseca

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Watanabe, R.A.S., Cruz, J.S., de Souza Luna, L.K. et al. Respiratory syncytial virus: viral load, viral decay, and disease progression in children with bronchiolitis. Braz J Microbiol 53, 1241–1247 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42770-022-00742-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42770-022-00742-0

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