Viral isolation rates during summer from children with acute upper respiratory tract disease and healthy children.

Abstract

During August and September 1972, throat and rectal swabs were obtained for viral isolation from 103 children with upper respiratory tract infection (URI) and from 103 children, matched for age and sex, with no detectable clinical disease. Processed specimens were inoculated into WI-38, HeLa, and primary rhesus monkey kidney cell cultures. Fifty-one viruses (40 were enteroviruses) were isolated from throat swabs from ill children, compared with six (two were vaccine poliovirus strains) from healthy controls. Rectal swabs from ill and healthy children yielded 31 and 15 viruses, respectively; all were enteroviruses except one adenovirus. In both ill and healthy children, rectal swabs were positive in only half of the cases with positive throat swabs. Viruses were isolated only from rectal swabs from nine ill children and from 12 healthy controls. These data support the pathogenic role of enteroviruses in URI and indicate that isolation of virus only from rectal swabs has no etiologic significance in URI.