Ricerc@Sapienza

Aim: The most frequent cause of lower respiratory tract infection in infants is bronchiolitis. Up to now there is no agreement on the upper limit age of bronchiolitis. Our aim was to identify if there are clinical differences in infants hospitalized for bronchiolitis between 0–6 months and 6–12 months of age. A secondary aim was to establish whether there was differences in terms of recurrent wheezing at 12, 24, and 36 months of follow-up.

Background: Bronchiolitis is the most common acute viral infection of the lower respiratory tract in infants. Clinical severity is associated with different risk factors; however, no clinical, laboratory, or radiological findings are able to predict the course of the disease in full-term infants. Lung ultrasound (LUS) is a valid technique for the diagnosis and evaluation of pediatric respiratory diseases.

Background: We sought to clarify possibly modifiable risk factors related to pollution responsible for acute bronchiolitis in hospitalized infants. Methods: For this observational study, we recruited 213 consecutive infants with bronchiolitis (cases: median age: 2 months; age range: 0.5-12 months; boys: 55.4%) and 213 children aged

We aimed to study respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) genotype distribution, clinical presentation, and disease severity in infants with bronchiolitis from RSV subtypes and new RSV genotypes. Methods: We prospectively enrolled previously healthy term infants less than one year old hospitalized for bronchiolitis in an Italian University hospital over 12 epidemic seasons. In 312 nasopharyngeal washings positive to RSV, we sequenced the viral genotype and analysed it according to patient data. Strain-specific RSV loads were quantified for 300 specimens.

BACKGROUND: As the expression of type III IFN receptor is restricted to the mucosal surfaces, its evaluation could be crucial to characterize the role of IFNλs during bronchiolitis.
OBJECTIVES: This study was designed to investigate airway type III IFN receptor (IFNLR1/IL10RB) expression during respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) or human rhinovirus (HRV) bronchiolitis.

Bronchiolitis severity is determined by a complex interaction among viral replication and antiviral immunity. The current respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-A, genotype ON1 demonstrated a high replicative capacity but seemed to be clinically less severe than the previously circulating RSV-A, NA1. To learn insights about ON1 innate immune response, we analyzed expression levels of type I/III interferon (IFN)-related genes in the respiratory mucosa of infants with RSV bronchiolitis. We enrolled RSV-positive bronchiolitis patients over 12 epidemic seasons at a university hospital in Rome.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the most common cause of infant hospitalization and causes a high burden of disease in the elderly, too. This enveloped negative-stranded RNA virus has been recently reclassified in the Pneumoviridae family. Infections of the respiratory cells happens when the two major surface glycoproteins, G and F, take contact with the cell receptor CX3CR1 and mediate entry by fusion, respectively.