Background: Viruses are the most common causes of respiratory tract infections in children. The implementation of rapid virology assays can identify the most common pathogens involved. This study was undertaken on Iranian children less than 6 years old with respiratory infection.
Methods: A total of 202 specimens were tested for the presence of 9 respiratory viruses by developing 3 multiplex reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and 1 uniplex polymerase chain reaction assays.
Results: Viral pathogens were detected in 92 samples (45.5%) with 5.4% having dual infections. Overall, respiratory syncytial virus was the most frequently identified virus (16.8%), followed by adenovirus (14.4%), influenza A virus (4.9%), parainfluenza virus-3 (4.4%), parainfluenza virus-1 (2.9%), and both influenza B virus and hMPV (0.49).
Conclusions: Respiratory tract infection is a frequent cause of pediatric morbidity and mortality and a common reason for admission in acute care hospitals and outpatients visits. Appropriate diagnostic testing is important for specific diagnosis at an early stage of the illness because of the similarity in clinical presentation of patients with different viral infections caused by several respiratory pathogens.