The epidemiology of respiratory syncytial virus infection in Afyonkarahisar region

Introduction and Objective: RSV, in children under 2 years of age, is the mostimportant cause of LRTI. Especially in children younger than 6 months,prematurity, children having CHD, CPD and immune-system disease are moreaffected. In our study, we aimed to investigate the clinical characteristics and riskfactors predisposing to RSV infections of the frequency of RSV infection in LRTIpatients that are under 2 years of age.Materials and Methods: 189 patients were studied due to ARI between October2008 and October 2010, which are inpatient or outpatient in Afyon UniversitySchool of Medicine and Children?s Pediatric Emergency. Two examples weretaken from the patients by nazofarengial swap method. One of the examples wasstudied by Coris BioConcept branded `RSV Resp-Strip? test kit withimmunochromatography method and the other was studied by Remel branded`PathoDx Respiratory Syncytial Virus Kit? with IFA method.SPSS for Windows statistical package program was used for statistical evaluationof patients. Fisher?s exact test and chi-square test was used for comparisons. If theresulting p-value was less than 0,05, the result was taken as significant; if it wasbigger than 0,05 then the results were considered as meaningless.Results: The frequency of RSV in our patients is found as 34%. In men, it was40,7% and in women, it was 23,7%, which had a significant differencestatistically. RSV infection was most common between 0-6 months.Epidemiologically RSV positivity is seen most frequently in January and Marchwith the decrease continued until June. Clinically, dyspnea was significantlyhigher in patients who were positive for RSV. In the treatment, which we applied82according to the clinical course of events, there were no difference between RSVpositiveand -negative patients.Conclusion: For children under two years old, RSV which is the main factor ofLRTI is an important cause of mortality and morbidity especially in risk patients(CHD, CPD, prematurity etc.). LRTI due to RSV in Afyon was seen most often inwinter and spring. The diagnostic methods, sensitivity of immunochromatographyagainst IFA determined as 88%, specificity and overall diagnostic rate weredetermined as 100% and 96% respectively. As a result, the reason of RSV, whichis the mortality and morbidity in children, should be identified with rapiddiagnostic methods and epidemiological studies should be done so that high-riskpatients for prophylaxis in children under two years of age.