Viruses associated with acute respiratory infections in Royal Air Force personnel

Abstract

SUMMARYAll respiratory illnesses which were reported to the medical officers between September 1966 and December 1967 on a Royal Air Force station of 350 men were studied virologically.Three periods of increased respiratory infections were observed: two occurred in the autumn, one in each year, and the third in the winter during January and February. The autumnal outbreaks were associated mainly with rhinovirus infections, and high isolation rates (82.1, 65-9 00) were achieved at these times. Few of the illnesses during the winter outbreak could be diagnosed in the laboratory, and no evidence was found of infection with 'coronaviruses'.Despite the entrance of 30 fresh recruits direct from civilian life every 5 weeks, the respiratory infections encountered on the station were very similar to those in the local population and were not predominantly infections with adenoviruses, Coevirus, and Mycoplasma pneumoniae, as previously reported from larger military recruit centres.

Further Observations on the Use of Organ Cultures in the Study of Acute Respiratorytract Infections

“…This study confirms the findings of earlier workers (Higgins, 1966; Tyrrell and Bynoe, 1966;Higgins, Ellis and Woolley, 1969;Higgins et al, 1970) that rhinoviruses account for most of the additional viruses that can be isolated from patients with acute respiratory-tract infections by the use of organ cultures. All but a few of these can be detected in the initial organ-culture fluids.…”

“…Furthermore, this and other studies in which organ cultures were used (Tyrrell and Bynoe, 1966;Higgins, 1966;McIntosh et al, 1967;Higgins et al, 1970; Roome, Dickinson and Caul, 1971 ;Higgins and Ellis, 1972) were limited by the scarcity of human embryonic material and the laborious nature of the technique. The purpose of this paper is to report on the use of organ cultures in the study of a larger number of cases of acute infection of the respiratory tract.…”

Risk factors for febrile respiratory illness and mono-viral infections in a semi-closed military environment: a case-control study

“…Febrile respiratory illness (FRI) results in substantial disease burden in semi-closed environments such as in the households [1] and militaries [2][3][4]. FRI is most commonly caused by viral infections, as observed in military respiratory surveillance programmes in Finland [5], United Kingdom [4,[6][7][8][9], Netherlands [10], France [11,12], South Korea [13][14][15], West Africa [16], Taiwan [17], China [18], Singapore [19][20][21][22][23][24], and the United States [3,[25][26][27][28][29].…”

“…Some of the risk factors proposed were crowded living quarters defined as more than three personnel and age group less than 40 year old [45], asthma and obesity [46], age group less than 30 years old and the high proportion of military who had being seroconverted [47]. Human rhinoviruses are known to cause common cold as well as more complicated respiratory infections [9,[48][49][50][51][52]. All known human rhinoviruses have been reported to be present in military recruits during respiratory infection [53].…”