Coronaviruses in children with febrile neutropenia.

Respiratory viruses are a possible etiology of infections in pediatric febrile neutropenic patients, considering that they are the most frequent cause of fever in otherwise healthy children.1 We conducted a prospective, observational study, from March to December 2012, in Santa Casa de São Paulo, a busy quaternary public hospital in the largest and most populous city in Brazil, with the objective of evaluating the frequency of respiratory viruses in upper airway secretion samples from febrile neutropenic pediatric patients. Fever and neutropenia were defined as previously described.2 Febrile neutropenia episodes in the same patient were considered different episodes if they were at least 15 days apart and complete resolution of the previous episode had occurred. Patients were invited to participate in the study within 72h after admission. If agreed, a written consent form was signed by one of the parents or the responsible adult for the patient. After consent, information regarding patient’s demographics, clinical and laboratory data was collected. A nasal swab, an oropharyngeal swab and also a saliva sample (collected with Salivette®) were obtained. Viral detection was performed using the FTD Respiratory 21-Multiplex (FastTrackDiagnostics, Luxembourg), a real-time polymerase chain