2020 Volume 94 Issue 2 Pages 181-185
In Japan, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection is seasonal with epidemics occurring between late autumn and winter. Recently, however, epidemics have tended to start during summer and autumn. To evaluate the change of the clinical features of infants who were infected in summer (summer epidemic group) and other seasons (non-summer epidemic group) the medical records were retrospectively reviewed of Japanese infants who were hospitalized in our institution between June 2014 to May 2019 due to poor general condition with a positive RSV rapid test. The summer epidemic group included 126 infants who had the rapid test between June to September and the non-summer epidemic group included 245 infants who had the test between October to April. The summer epidemic group showed a higher rate of infants with positive bronchial asthma predictive index and infants with wheezing. However, the ratio of infants with respiratory failure was similar in both groups. In conclusion, RSV infected infants in summer may be related to the diagnostic feature of bronchial asthma.
