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. 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.

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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.
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