Epidemiological characteristics of seven respiratory viruses among pediatric patients with acute respiratory tract infections from 2011 to 2015 in Dongguan, Southern China

Epidemiological characteristics of seven respiratory viruses among pediatric patients with acute respiratory tract infections from 2011 to 2015 in Dongguan, Southern ChinaDear Editor, Respiratory viruses are the major putative agents in infants and children with acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs).The prevalence and clinical characteristics of acute respiratory tract infections among children in China have been previously reported.However, those surveys were conducted mostly in developed cities, such as Beijing, 1 Shanghai, 2 Guangzhou, 3 and Shenzhen. 4Limited data on pediatric patients with various respiratory viruses were available in medium or smallsized cities in China.This study aims to determine the epidemiological characteristics of seven respiratory viruses (including Influenza A virus, InfA; Influenza B virus, InfB; Respiratory syncytial virus, RSV; Adenovirus, ADV; Parainfluenza virus type 1/2/3, PIV 1/2/3) among children (0-14 years old) presenting with ARTIs between June 2011 and September 2015 in Dongguan, southern China.In the study, a total of 8031 samples from nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from children with ARTIs at the Children's Hospital of Dongguan.ARTIs were diagnosed according to the Chinese guidelines.This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Children's Hospital of Dongguan.All patients' parents provided written informed consent.Seven respiratory viruses were tested by using D 3 Ultra DFA Respiratory Virus Screening & ID Kit, Ohio, USA.All procedures were conducted in accordance with the manufactures' manual.Of the 8031 enrolled patients, 1867 (23.2%) were positive for at least one virus, and other children with ARTIs might have been infected by other respiratory viruses or microorganisms, such as mycoplasma, chlamydia and bacteria, which were not tested in our study.The positive rate of the seven respiratory viruses was higher than that reported in Shenzhen (4346/30,443, 14.3%) 4 and Wuhan (5194/39,756, 13.1%), 5 but lower than positivity rate found in Guangzhou (1482/4242, 34.9%). 3The discrepancy might be due to different sample size, varied climate, geographic location, and sensitivity of different detection methods.RSV (11.8%, 949/8031) was the most frequently detected virus causing ARTIs in this study, which was frequently