Respiratory viruses can cause a wide spectrum of pulmonary diseases, ranging from mild, upper respiratory tract infections to severe and life-threatening lower respiratory tract infections, including the development of acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Viral clearance and subsequent recovery from infection require activation of an effective host immune resp...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether treatment with clarithromycin for respiratory tract infections was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular (CV) events, arrhythmias or all-cause mortality compared with other antibiotics. DESIGN Retrospective cohort design comparing clarithromycin monotherapy for lower (LRTI) or upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) with other antibiotic monothera...

BACKGROUND Medicines are commonly accessed and used for management of illness in children without a prescription. This potentially increases the risk of unwanted treatment outcomes. We investigated medicine use practices in management of symptoms of acute upper respiratory tract infections among children (≤12 years) in households in Nakawa division, Kampala city. METHODS This was a cross-sect...

Sequential recordings were made in the first five months after birth of metabolic rate, environmental temperature, and body temperature during sleep at home in 17 infants, each with an older sibling. Further recordings were made whenever an older sibling developed an upper respiratory tract infection (URTI), again four to six days later, and again two weeks later, aiming to achieve recordings b...

Physicians mention patients' expectations as a reason for prescribing antibiotics for common (viral) upper respiratory tract infections despite clinical evidence against their use and the physicians' better judgement. We aimed to assess the prevalence of such expectations and factors of influence (knowledge and attitudes) in Germany's general population. In November 2008, 1,778 persons register...

The aim of this study was to explore the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of village doctors regarding the prescribing of antibiotics for children under 15 years with upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) in rural China. Twelve focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted in Xianning, a prefecture-level city in rural China, during December 2014. We conducted 6 FGDs with 35 village doct...

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether compliance of patients to antibiotic treatment is better when antibiotics are administered once than multiple times daily. METHODS We performed a systematic search in PubMed and Scopus databases. Only randomized controlled trials were considered eligible for inclusion. Compliance to antibiotic treatment was the outcome of the meta-analysis. RESULTS Twenty-si...

The article by TEEPE et al. [1] recently published in the European Respiratory Journal is an interesting paper on the risk factors of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in children and adults in a primary-care setting. The study population consisted of 156 young adults and 107 children (aged ,15 yrs) suffering from CAP, and three controls were selected for each case from the same age group. The...

I read with great interest the article by Kartasurya et al.. The authors conclude that Zn combined with vitamin A significantly reduces the percentage of days with upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) in preschool Indonesian children. However, there are a few points in the paper that deserve comment. First, the claimed reduction in the percentage of days with URTI following Zn supplementat...

OBJECTIVE Communication between emergency department (ED) staff and parents of children with asthma may play a role in asthma exacerbation management. We investigated the extent to which parents of children with asthma implement recommendations provided by the ED staff. METHOD We asked questions on asthma triggers, ED care (including education and discharge recommendations), and asthma manage...