Co-infección viral respiratoria en ni？os hospitalizados por infección respiratoria aguda y su impacto en la gravedad clínica

introduction: respiratory viruses are the leading cause of acute respiratory tract infection (ari) in children. it has been reported that viral respiratory co-infection could be associated with severe clinical course. objectives: to describe the frequency of viral co-infection in children admitted for alri and evaluate whether this co-infection was associated with more severe clinical course. patients and methods: prospective, descriptive study in pediatric patients who were hospitalized for ari, with molecular detection of at least 1 respiratory virus in nasopharyngeal sample studied by pcr-microarray for 17 respiratory viruses. results: 110 out of 147 patients with detection of > 1 respiratory virus were included. viral co-infection was detected in 41/110 (37%). 22/110 children (20%) were classified as moderate to severe clinical course and 88/110 (80%) were classified as mild clinical course. in the group of moderate to severe clinical course, viral respiratory co-infection was detected in 6/22 (27.3%), compared to 35/88 (39.8 %) in the mild clinical course group. no statistically significant difference was found regarding the presence of co-infection between groups (p = 0.33). conclusions: we detected high rates of viral co-infection in children with ari. it was not possible to demonstrate that viral co-infections were related with severe clinical course in hospitalized children.