Neurologic Alterations Due to Respiratory Virus Infections

Bohmwald, Karen; Gálvez, Nicolás M. S.; Ríos, Mariana; Kalergis, Alexis M.

A few years later, a case report of three preterm infants which were hospitalized by hRSV-induced bronchiolitis, also presented neurological abnormalities (Morton et al., 1981) . Despite these finding, a few years passed until, in Hirayama et al. (1999) reported the case of a 3-year-old child that was hRSV-positive with clinical signs of ataxia. In the CSF, a high number of leucocytes was found; however, they could not detect hRSV by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The authors concluded that this child manifested a meningoencephalitis with cerebellitis associated with hRSV-infection (Hirayama et al., 1999) . , Ng et al. (2001 , performed a retrospective study where clinical data of 487 patients with bronchiolitis by hRSV infection were evaluated. The results of this analysis showed that 1.8% of the children exhibited visible clinical signs of encephalopathy, particularly seizures. Another retrospective investigation that evaluated 226 patients detected that 121 were hRSV-positive and 115 hSV-negative. In the hRSV-positive cohort, about a 6.6% presented seizures; however, this number was similar for the one reported in the hRSV-negative cohort (Kho et al., 2004) . In addition to this, it was found that 19.8% of the patients exhibited apnea, but no differences were found when compared with the hRSV-negative cohort (Kho et al., 2004) . Importantly, these data support the idea that it is relevant to analyze other symptoms associated with hRSV bronchiolitis carefully.