Virologic study of acute lower respiratory tract infections in children admitted to the paediatric department of Blida University Hospital, Algeria

Derrar, F.; Izri, K.; Kaddache, C.; Boukari, R.; Hannoun, D.

The detection of rhinoviruses using nasal aspiration may be associated with interpretation problems because this virus may persist 2 weeks or more after the acute period [32] , and it may be detected in 9% to 36% of asymptomatic subjects [33] . Nevertheless, most authors have clearly demonstrated that HRV infection is much more frequent in sick children than in asymptomatic children [25, 34] . Metapneumovirus was the last paramyxovirus to be identified in the Netherlands in 2001 [35] . It belongs to the subfamily Pneumovirinae, which also includes RSV and had never been described before in Algeria; this finding is therefore novel. In this study, HMPV was responsible for infections in 22.2% of children. This rate of HMPV infection is high in our study population compared to what has been reported for hospitalized children in other studies. The incidence of HMPV infections is estimated at 5% to 10% of hospitalized ALRTI [36, 37] . In one Dutch study carried out over 17 months on samples from hospitalized patients of all ages, HMPV was found in 6.5% of patients with respiratory infections. Most HMPVs were detected in children under 5 years of age, with a peak observed in children between 4 and 6 months of age [38] . A Greek study found HMPV in 16.5% of samples, followed by HRV (14.3%) [39] . In the same country, a more recent study found HMPV infection in 6% of cases in 127 hospitalized infants under 12 months of age, all with a moderate clinical picture [40] . In our sample, the average age of children was 7.5 months. Van den Hoogen et al. [38] noted, as do we, that patients infected with HMPV are older than those infected with RSV.