Nose swabs may predict longer intensive care among babies suffering from RSV bronchiolitis

When a child with RSV requires intensive care, parents often ask about how long it will take before their child can go home. Currently, there is no reliable way to answer this question. Results of a new study from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, however, offer important insights.

Researchers used nose swabs from children with RSV in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) within a few days of hospital stay to examine what genes turn on in response to the virus. They found that despite the same quantity of RSV and the same clinical presentation, some children had signs of greater damage to the cells lining the nose, and this correlated to longer PICU stays.

Results were published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.

"We were excited to find that the severity of a child's illness related to the different sets of genes turned on in their body's response to RSV," said senior author Bria Coates, MD, Critical Care physician at Lurie Children's and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "The ability to identify which infants with RSV in intensive care will recover quickly and which patients will require a longer stay would provide invaluable information to parents and medical providers."