Acute lower respiratory tract infections in children.

Acute lower respiratory tract infection (ALRTI) is a common illness, but there have been relatively few studies of the bacterial etiology in developing countries. Nasopharyngeal aspirates of 70 children under 10 years of age with ALRTI were cultured for aerobic bacterial pathogens. Klebsiella pneumoniae was the commonest organism (32.2%) isolated followed by S. pneumoniae (10%), E. coli (10%), P. aeruginosa (5.7%), S. aureus (2.8%) and H. influenzae (1.4%). There were significantly more bacterial pathogens isolated in children <1 year of age (73.7%) than in those >1 year of age (56.2%) (P=0.03). A shift in spectrum from Gram-positive cocci to Gram-negative bacilli in ALRTI was observed in our study.