Association of specific viral infections with childhood asthma exacerbations

Hassanzad, Maryam; Nadji, Seyed Alireza; Darougar, Sepideh; Tashayoie-Nejad, Sabereh; Boloursaz, Mohammad Reza; Mahdaviani, Seyed Alireza; Baghaie, Nooshin; Ghaffaripour, Hosseinali; Velayati, Ali Akbar

The study was performed at Dr. Daneshvari Hospital Pediatric Emergency Department, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran between 2014 and 2015. Patients included in the study were between 1 month and 17 years of age presenting with a wheezing episode severe enough to require hospitalization and a previous history of two or more wheezing episodes diagnosed by a physician and a personal and/or familial allergic background. Because of the difficulty in differentiation of asthma from wheezing episodes of other origin in very young children, the patients enrolled in the study needed to comply with the diagnostic criteria of bronchial asthma according to the GINA guidelines [8] . Children with a history of premature birth and the presence of the pulmonary or cardiovascular system, metabolic disorders, immunosuppression, genetic, or neurologic disorders were excluded from the study.