Understanding Human Coronavirus HCoV-NL63

Abdul-Rasool, Sahar; Fielding, Burtram C

Many groups have reported that the occurrence of coinfections with HCoV-NL63 and other respiratory viruses, including other human coronaviruses, influenza A virus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), parainfluenza virus and human metapneumovirus (hMPV), are common [26, 30, 46, 47, 51, 53, 54, 60, 61] . Also, co-infected patients are more likely to be hospitalized, indicating the severity of this kind of superinfection. In a study from Germany, RSV-A and HCoV-NL63 was the most common co-infection indentified in children less than three years of age. This is probably due to the high incidence of RSV-A in winter and the overlap in seasonality of the viruses [53] . Also, in Italy, HCoV-NL63 circulates as a mixture of variant strains and is often associated with other viral infections [30] . In South Africa, co-infection of patients with HCoV-NL63 and bocavirus in hospitalized children is reported. Nasopharyngeal and bronchoalveolar lavage samples from 341 patients were screened for common respiratory viruses, and the copresence of HCoV-NL63 and bocavirus in at least one sample was reported [62] .