Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012;7(3):e34353.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034353. Epub 2012 Mar 30.

High viral load of human bocavirus correlates with duration of wheezing in children with severe lower respiratory tract infection

Yu Deng  1 , Xiaoyang Gu, Xiaodong Zhao, Jian Luo, Zhengxiu Luo, Lijia Wang, Zhou Fu, Xiqiang Yang, Enmei Liu
Affiliations

High viral load of human bocavirus correlates with duration of wheezing in children with severe lower respiratory tract infection

Yu Deng et al. PLoS One. 2012.

Abstract

Background: Human bocavirus (HBoV) is a newly discovered parvovirus and increasing evidences are available to support its role as an etiologic agent in lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI). The objective of this study is to assess the impact of HBoV viral load on clinical characteristics in children who were HBoV positive and suffered severe LRTI.

Methods: Lower respiratory tract aspirates from 186 hospitalized children with severe LRTI were obtained by bronchoscopy. HBoVs were detected by real-time PCR and other 10 infectious agents were examined using PCR and/or direct fluorescent assay.

Results: Thirty-one patients (24.6%) were tested positive for HBoV in the respiratory tract aspirates. Fifteen samples had a high viral load (>10(4) copies/mL) and the other sixteen samples had a low viral load (<10(4) copies/mL). The duration of presented wheezing and hospitalization was longer in children with high viral load of HBoV than that in children with low viral load. The days of wheezing showed a correlation with viral load of HBoV.

Conclusion: We confirmed that HBoV was frequently detected in patients with severe LRTI. Wheezing was one of the most common symptoms presented by patients with positive HBoV. A high HBoV viral load could be an etiologic agent for LRTI, which led to more severe lower respiratory tract symptom, longer duration of wheezing and hospitalization.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Distribution of human bocavirus (HBoV) viral loads.
Thirty one respiratory aspirate samples were tested positive for HBoV. Each sample is represented by a single dot. Viral loads in the nasopharyngeal aspirates ranged from <500 to 1×109 copies per mL of sample material. The dotted line indicates the cutoff between the high (>104 copies/mL) and low (<104 copies/mL) HBoV viral load groups.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Correlation between HBoV viral load and days of wheezing.
HBoV viral load was correlated to the days of presented wheezing. Correlations were made with Spearman's two-tailed rank correlation in addition to Pearson's linear regression two-tailed analysis. Correlation coefficient = 0.538, P = 0.003.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Allander T, Tammi MT, Eriksson M, Bjerkner A, Tiveljung-Lindell A, et al. Cloning of a human parvovirus by molecular screening of respiratory tract samples. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005;102:12891–12896. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Allander T, Jartti T, Gupta S, Niesters HG, Lehtinen P, et al. Human Bocavirus and Acute Wheezing in Children. Clin Infect Dis. 2007;44:904–910. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Dakhama A, Hegele RG, Laflamme G, Israël-Assayag E, Cormier Y. Common respiratory viruses in lower airways of patients with acute hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 1999;159:1316–1322. - PubMed
    1. Choi EH, Lee HJ, Kim SJ, Eun BW, Kim NH, et al. The association of newly identified respiratory viruses with lower respiratory tract infections in Korean children, 2000–2005. Clin Infect Dis. 2006;43:585–592. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Fan J, Henrickson KJ. Rapid diagnosis of human parainfluenza virus type 1 infection by quantitative reverse transcription-PCREnzyme hybridization assay. J Clin Microbiol. 1996;34:1914–1917. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources