Summary:Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) has been reported as a cause of death among autologous peripheral blood stem cell (ASCT) and marrow recipients and recommendations for therapy with aerosolized ribavirin plus intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) made. This therapy is expensive, may be toxic, and causes a significant disruption of patient care. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the morbidity and mortality of RSV infections in patients with multiple myeloma undergoing ASCT without ribavirin therapy. During the months of February-April 1997, 10 consecutive patients (median age 57 years, seven males) with advanced and heavily pretreated myeloma underwent ASCT while having active RSV upper respiratory tract infection. After melphalan (200 mg/m 2 ), all patients became neutropenic (Ͻ1000 cells/mm 3 ) for a median of 7 days. Ribavirin was not given to any patient. No patient developed lower respiratory tract infection, required transfer to intensive care or died at a median follow-up of 8 months. One patient developed tracheobronchitis requiring oxygenation by nasal cannula. No delay in the treatment of the underlying myeloma was incurred. RSV infection may not necessarily be a contraindication for ASCT or an indication for therapy with aerosolized ribavirin. Additional studies are needed to confirm our preliminary findings. Keywords: multiple myeloma; ribavirin; RSV infection; bone marrow or stem cell transplantation Viral infections represent a challenging problem in immunocompromised patients. 1-3 Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is an important community and nosocomial respiratory pathogen for infants, young children and immunocompromised adults. 4 RSV causes especially severe disease in the prematurely born, the elderly and in patients with chronic cardiopulmonary diseases or T cell deficiencies, such as peripheral stem cell or marrow transplant recipients. 5 solized ribavirin and high-dose IVIG has been recently recommended for the treatment of RSV upper respiratory tract infections on the basis of an uncontrolled study from a single center. 6 However, this approach has never been evaluated in randomized trials in adults. The trials in pediatric RSV infections gave conflicting results: some showing clinical improvement, 7-13 while others showed no benefit [14][15][16][17][18] or even a detrimental effect (eg prolonged duration of hospitalization, intensive care unit stay, duration of hypoxia, and mechanical ventilation) [19][20][21][22][23][24] (Table 1). A recent metaanalysis of randomized trials concluded that the administration of ribavirin in pediatric RSV infections is not supported by the clinical studies and does not result in decreases in length of hospital stay or mortality rate. 18 More recent studies which included significantly larger numbers of patients than earlier reports, concluded that aerosolized ribavirin was detrimental to infants with RSV infection. [20][21][22]24