Abstract
Influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cause acute infections of the respiratory tract. Since the viruses both cause illnesses with similar symptoms, researchers often try to apply knowledge gleaned from study of one virus to the other virus. This can be an effective and efficient strategy for understanding viral dynamics or developing treatment strategies, but only if we have a full understanding of the similarities and differences between the two viruses. This study used mathematical modeling to quantitatively compare the viral kinetics of in vitro RSV and influenza virus infections. Specifically, we determined the viral kinetics parameters for RSV A2 and three strains of influenza virus, A/WSN/33 (H1N1), A/Puerto Rico/8/1934 (H1N1), and pandemic H1N1 influenza virus. We found that RSV viral titer increases at a slower rate and reaches its peak value later than influenza virus. Our analysis indicated that the slower increase of RSV viral titer is caused by slower spreading of the virus from one cell to another. These results provide estimates of dynamical differences between influenza virus and RSV and help provide insight into the virus-host interactions that cause observed differences in the time courses of the two illnesses in patients.
Highlights
Acute respiratory tract infections with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza are leading causes of respiratory illness [1]
Suggests a possible mechanism for these observations since we find that the key difference in the dynamics of RSV and influenza virus is that RSV takes longer to transmit virus from infectious cells to healthy cells
Most data sets showed a plateau of the viral titer probably because all cells in the cultures were infected at the moment peak viral titer was reached
Summary
Acute respiratory tract infections with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza are leading causes of respiratory illness [1]. Both infections produce similar symptoms and lead to serious illness primarily in the young and the elderly [2, 3]. Given these similarities, it can be useful to compare the viral dynamics of the two viruses in cells because this may help to understand the different viral dynamics in patients, and to translate the knowledge of treating one illness to help treating the other. Comparative studies focused on the mortality of the two diseases [5], to understand disease burden, and on differentiating the symptoms of the two diseases [4, 6,7,8], in order to assist
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