THE ESSENTIAL
- Bronchiolitis is a respiratory infection caused by the RSV virus, characterized by an episode of respiratory discomfort: coughing, rapid and wheezing breathing.
- It affects nearly 30% of infants under the age of 2 every winter, according to Public Health France.
- RSV infection appears to be facilitated by exposure of the lungs to air pollution, a study has found.
Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is fairly rare and harmless to healthy adults, but it can cause serious complications for young children and the elderly. Highly contagious, it is the most common cause of respiratory infections in young children worldwide, including bronchiolitis.
Respiratory syncytial virus infection: what symptoms?
It mainly infects infants under the age of two, whose immune system is still developing. The latter thus run a significant risk of being hospitalized following complications due to the infection, such as respiratory problems or dehydration. This is why spotting the signs of an RSV infection is important for parents.
Symptoms usually begin to appear between four and six days following infection with RSV. In adults, it is responsible for rhinitis or a flu-like syndrome. Symptoms include runny nose, decreased appetite, coughing, sneezing, fever, and wheezing. The disease goes away on its own within a week or two for healthy adults.
However, infants, who have no way of telling adults that they are feeling sick, may not show these symptoms at first. In this case, the three symptoms to identify are irritability, decreased activity and breathing difficulties (dry cough with wheezing and rapid breathing). A slight fever may also be present during the first days of illness. In the presence of these symptoms, a visit to the general practitioner or the pediatrician is essential.
Soon possible to detect severe cases of RSV infection in advance
A recent studypublished in the journal Frontiers in Immunology, discovered a potential way to know which RSV-infected children need intensive care and for how long. According to researchers at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, it’s nasal swabs that might tell us: Children who had more damage to the cell walls of their noses ended up staying in the nasal passages longer. pediatric intensive care units.
According to the study authors, if the results hold true in larger clinical studies, scientists might develop a PCR test specifically for RSV that might identify children with the infection at risk for serious complications.
This might save the lives of many infants since, according to a previous study, while it was estimated that 120,000 babies died from RSV infection worldwide, the figures are actually much higher. When the researchers included death rates from hospital data, the projections increased to one in 10 deaths among infants under six months. Babies living in low- and middle-income countries with insufficient access to medical care are at even higher risk of dying from their viral infection.
