Abstract
Background: Bronchiolitis is the leading cause of hospitalization in infants <1 year. Aim: to analyze epidemiological and clinical features of infants during 10 consecutive bronchiolitis seasons (Oct 2004-May 2014).
Methods: among 190950 children admitted to Pediatric Emergency Department, “Sapienza” University of Rome, in 3151 patients bronchiolitis was diagnosed. Out of these, we selected 724 previously healthy term infants(median age 64d;395M) hospitalized and collected nasal aspirates to detect, with RT-PCR, 14 respiratory viruses. Clinical data were extracted from clinical charts. Results: Percentage of hospitalization was stable during 10 years. Viruses were detected in 348 infants(48%): RSV in 30.8%, RV in 6.6%, hBoV in 1.8%, co-infections in 5.8%, other viruses in 3%. Analyzing the 10 seasons we found a peak of incidence for bronchiolitis every four years(Fig). RV was equally distributed during the all season while RSV was detected mostly during the colder months(Dec-Jan). No significant differences were found between infants with bronchiolitis from different viruses and clinical variables analyzed except for higher number of eosinophils in RV patients compared to other viruses (p<0,001).
Conclusions: incidence of bronchiolitis follows viral season and it seems to have a peak every 4 years with a significant decrease the year after. Further studies are needed to understand the role of eosinophils in HRV bronchiolitis.
- Copyright ©ERS 2015
