Viral respiratory infections are among the most common causes of disease in humans, particularly in young children, and remain a major public health problem worldwide. For many geographic regions, there is limited epidemiological information on the main causative agents of these diseases. In this article, we investigated, in a prospective study, the viral agents leading to acute respiratory disease in children younger than 15 years of age who were admitted to the pediatric emergency unit of a major teaching hospital in Erbil City, capital of the Kurdistan region, Iraq. Nasopharyngeal samples obtained from 269 hospitalized children were analyzed for viral respiratory pathogens using the xTAG Respiratory Virus Panel Fast assay, and the data were correlated with the clinical and demographic information available for these patients. One or more respiratory virus(es) were detected in 203 out of 269 (75.5%) samples. The most frequent viruses were enterovirus/rhinovirus (n = 88; 32.7%), respiratory syncytial virus (n = 55; 20.4%), and human metapneumovirus (n = 36; 13.4%). In 42 samples (15.6%), coinfections with 2 or more respiratory viruses were detected, with enterovirus/rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, human metapneumovirus, and adenovirus being identified as the most common agents in viral coinfections in these patients.

Background:Hepatitis C virus is a common cause of liver disease, hepatitis C virus exhibits high degree of genetic heterogeneity with characterized regional variations in genotype prevalence. Objective: To determine the prevalence of HCV genotypes in patients of Erbil Province, Kurdistan region/Iraq. Patients and Methods:Blood samples were collected from 165 patients diagnosed positive for HCV antibody, which referral by specialists to Public Health Laboratory in Erbil province (Kurdistan/Iraq) between March 2015 and December 2016 for genotyping. Following extraction of viral RNA, HCV genotypes were determined in each case by using a PCR based genotyping kit. Results: With (37%) genotype 1 was the most frequent genotype detected followed by 3 (27.3%), 4 (20%) and 2 (2.4%), while mixed genotypes were detected in 13.3%. Conclusion:This study gives different estimation of HCV genotypes distribution among infected HCV patients in Kurdistan from prevalent distribution in Iraq and Middle East Arab countries, but comparable to global distribution.