ABSTRACT
Background: Acute respiratory tract infections cause 4.5 million childhood deaths all over the world. Most of these deaths occur in the developing countries. Both bacterial and viral pathogens arc responsible for these deaths. Adenovirus respiratory tract infections are spread over the entire world, but the fatal disease is rarely seen
Methods: This descriptive case-series study has been conducted from October 2003 to September 2004 on 96 children of up to 5 year old. The relative frequency of adenovirus respiratory tract infection was studied. For this purpose, the nasopharyngeal secretions were obtained to detect adenovirus by Immmofluorescent Antibody [IFA] method. Seasonal incidence age distribution, and clinical signs and symptoms of this infection were studied
Findings: The relative frequency of Adenovirus respiratory infection was 10.4%. Most commonly it occurs in children aged less than 1 year and in autumn. In addition, cough and rhinorrhea are the most common signs [90%] and fever is the most common symptom [100%] in our patients. Similarly, pneumonia was the most common [40%] clinical manifestation in our patients
Conclusion: According to above data, the frequency of Adenoviurs infection and the common age for infection in this study are similar to other studies but pneumonia is the common illness which can be explained by the fact that this hospital is a referral center for these patients