Infants hospitalized for Bordetella pertussis infection commonly have respiratory viral coinfections
Background: Whether viral coinfections cause more severe disease than Bordetella pertussis (B. pertussis) alone remains
unclear. We compared clinical disease severity and sought clinical and demographic differences between infants with
B. pertussis infection alone and those with respiratory viral coinfections. We also analyzed how respiratory infections
were distributed during the 2 years study.
Methods: We enrolled 53 infants with pertussis younger than 180 days (median age 58 days, range 17–109 days, 64.