Serologically diagnosed acute human bocavirus 1 infection in childhood community‐acquired pneumonia

Nascimento‐Carvalho, Amanda C.; Vilas‐Boas, Ana‐Luisa; Fontoura, Maria‐Socorro H.; Xu, Man; Vuorinen, Tytti; Söderlund‐Venermo, Maria; Ruuskanen, Olli; Nascimento‐Carvalho, Cristiana M.

AIM: To assess the role of human bocavirus 1 (HBoV1) as a causative agent of non‐severe community‐acquired pneumonia (CAP) in children. METHODS: Patients aged 2‐59 months with non‐severe CAP (respiratory complaints and radiographic pulmonary infiltrate/consolidation) attending a University Hospital in Salvador, Brazil were enrolled in a prospective cohort. From 820 recruited children in a clinical trial (http://ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01200706), nasopharyngeal aspirate (NPA), and acute and convalescent serum samples were obtained from 759 (92.6%) patients. NPAs were tested for 16 respiratory viruses by PCR. Acute HBoV1 infection was confirmed by measuring specific IgM and IgG responses in paired serum samples. RESULTS: Respiratory viruses were detected in 693 (91.3%; 95%CI: 89.1‐93.2) CAP cases by PCR. HBoV1‐DNA was detected in 159 (20.9%; 95%CI: 18.2‐24.0) cases. Of these 159 PCR positive cases, acute HBoV1 infection was confirmed serologically in 38 cases (23.9%; 95%CI: 17.8‐31.0). Overall, acute HBoV1 infection was confirmed in 5.0% (38/759) of non‐severe CAP patients. HBoV1 was detected in 151 cases with at least one other virus making 31.7% of all multiple virus (n = 477) detections. Among all 759 cases, 216 had one respiratory virus detected, and sole HBoV1 was detected in only 8 (3.7%). Acute HBoV1 infection was serologically diagnosed in 34 (22.5%) HBoV1‐DNA‐positive cases with another virus, compared to 4 (50.0%) cases with sole virus detection (p = 0.09). CONCLUSION: HBoV1 was detected by PCR in one fifth of the children with non‐severe CAP and acute HBoV1 infection was serologically confirmed in one quarter of these cases.