Journal
PEDIATRIC PULMONOLOGY
Volume 53, Issue 5, Pages 664-667Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/ppul.23963
Keywords
congenital heart disease; mortality; pneumonia; pneumothorax; respiratory syncytial virus
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Funding
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
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Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), responsible for more than three million yearly hospitalizations and up to 118000 deaths in children under 5 years, is the leading pulmonary cause of death for this age group that lacks a licensed vaccine. Ninety-nine percent of deaths due to the virus occur in developing countries. In-hospital RSV fatalities affect previously healthy term infants in association with bacterial sepsis, clinically significant pneumothoraxes and, to a lesser extent, comorbid conditions. Community deaths affect low-income children from socially vulnerable families and appear to be as frequent as inpatient fatalities. In industrialized countries, RSV deaths occur almost exclusively in children with premorbid conditions. In a sense, RSV is an opportunistic killer. It needs a synergistic premorbid, medical practice-related, infectious, or social co-factor to cause a fatal outcome. But while the complex problems associated with these co-factors await solutions, candidate vaccines, long-lived monoclonal antibodies and antivirals against RSV are under clinical evaluation. It seems reasonable to predict that the landscape of RSV infections will look different in the next decade.
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