Lack of Significant Seasonality in Detecting Respiratory Viruses on Hypertrophic Adenotonsillar Tissues Suggests Persisting Infections

Abstract

Objectives:

Determine the seasonality of respiratory viruses in adenoids and palatine tonsils in children with chronic adenotonsillitis. These seasonal oscillations were used to estimate the presence of persistent or acute asymptomatic viral infections.

Methods:

This was a cross-sectional study which included 172 children with adenotonsillar hypertrophy and clinical evidence of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome or recurrent adenotonsillitis from 2010 through 2012. The respiratory viruses were detected by TaqMan real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) in nasopharyngeal secretions, adenoids, and palatine tonsils biopsies from all analyzed patients.

Results:

Frequency of several respiratory viruses was extremely high in the adenotonsillar tissues among all analyzed patients. In fact, genomes of at least one respiratory virus were detected in over 87% of them. Although some viruses have not shown any discernible seasonal variations, human enterovirus detection peaks in summer/autumn months and summer nadirs of human respiratory syncytial virus in both years of the study, they were discrete, and not significant. No obvious seasonality was observed among the analyzed viruses.

Conclusions:

This frequent rate of viral detection associated with the lack of significant seasonality of detection of respiratory viruses in patients with chronic adenotonsillar diseases during the 2-year study period supports the notion that such high frequency of virus genome detection is related to virus persistence in lymphoepithelial tissues of the upper respiratory tract, which can function as natural reservoirs of respiratory viruses for the community.