Children hospitalised with four common viral diseases showed epidemiological differences but few socio‐economic variations

Abstract

Aim: This study explored the differences in demographic and socio-economic factors between children hospitalised due to four common viral infections.Methods: Demographic data were obtained from Statistics Sweden on >3000 children admitted to Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital in 2009-2014 with rotavirus, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) or chickenpox. We compared demographic and socio-economic factors between case groups using logistic regression with rotavirus cases as reference.Results: There were differences in the median age at admission; RSV cases were younger (0.4 years), influenza (2.4 years) and chickenpox cases (2.7 years) older than rotavirus cases (1.2 years). RSV, influenza and chickenpox cases lived in families with more children than rotavirus cases. RSV and influenza cases were more likely to have underlying chronic conditions. Mothers of RSV cases were more likely to be born in Sweden. Further socio-economic differences were not robustly confirmed in sensitivity analyses. Conclusion:We found a few differences in demographic factors between children hospitalised with the four common infections, which were mainly explained by the epidemiology and transmission patterns of these infections. K E Y W O R D Sdemographic factors, hospitalised children, risk factors, socio-economic factors, viral disease Key notes• This study compared demographic and socio-economic factors between children admitted to a Stockholm paediatric hospital with four viral diseases.• Demographic data were obtained from Statistics Sweden on >3000 children admitted in 2009-2014 with rotavirus, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus or chickenpox.• We found demographic differences, which could be explained by the diseases' epidemiology and transmission patterns. Socio-economic differences were few.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

Prevalence of Respiratory Viruses in Children With Acute Respiratory Infections in Shanghai, China, From 2013 to 2022

“…Nevertheless, RSV was found to be the most common virus detected in inpatients (in 10.55% of inpatients), and was identified as the leading virus in outpatients and inpatients aged < 6-month-old, and inpatients aged 6-to 11-month-old and 1-to 2-year-old. RSV was likely to be related to hospitalization in children, consistent with other studies [8,21]. A systematic analysis conducted in 2019 also showed that RSV contributes substantially to the global morbidity and mortality burden in children aged 0-60 months, especially during the first 6 months of life and in low-income and middle-income countries [2].…”