Clinical features and epidemiological analysis of respiratory human adenovirus infection in hospitalized children: a cross-sectional study in Zhejiang

Background HAdV is one of the common pathogens in hospitalized children with acute respiratory infections (ARIs). We aim to describe the clinical and laboratory features, epidemiological characteristics, and HAdV species and/or types of inpatients with HAdV respiratory infections. Methods Respiratory samples were gathered from inpatients diagnosed ARIs in Children’s Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, and were detected by using Direct Immunofluorescence Assay from 2018 to 2019. PCR amplification and sequencing of the hypervariable zone of hexon gene were used for genotyping. The clinical and laboratory features, and HAdV genotyping, and epidemiological characteristic analysis were retrospectively performed. Results Of 7072 samples collected, 488 were identified as HAdV-positive. The overall detection rate was 6.9%. The peaked detection rate was 14.1% in January 2019. HAdV-positive cases with ARIs mainly appeared in winter. The detection rate was highest among children between 6 months and 2 years (8.7%, 123/1408). Clinical diagnosis included pneumonia (70.3%, 343/488), bronchitis (7.0%, 34/488) and acute upper respiratory tract infection (22.7%, 111/488). The common clinical manifestations were fever (93.4%, 456/488), cough (94.7%, 462/488), wheezing (26.2%, 128/488), and shortness of breath (14.8%, 72/488). 213 (43.6%) cases had co-infection and 138 (28.3%) cases had extrapulmonary symptoms. 96(19.7%) cases had intrapulmonary and intrathoracic complications.78 (16.0%) had an underlying condition, most of which were congenital heart diseases (20.5%, 16/78). The proportions of hyperpyrexia, duration of fever > 10 days, severe pneumonia, and wheezing in the co-infection group were remarkably higher than those in HAdV single-infection group (all p < 0.05). The proportions of duration of hospitalization, duration of fever > 10 days, wheezing, shortness of breath, change in level of consciousness, serosal fluids, extrapulmonary symptoms, co-infections and underlying diseases were ...