A study reveals that children with rhinovirus-positive bronchiolitis used asthma controller medication more often than kids with respiratory syncytial virus.
Eija Bergroth, MD, from the department of pediatrics at Kuopio University Hospital, Finland, led the study. To understand possible causes of asthma medication use, Bergroth and co-workers studied 408 children between 2008 and 2010. The study participants were younger than 24 months when they were hospitalized in a pediatric or intensive care unit for bronchiolitis. A total of 365 kids completed the 12-month study. The investigators surveyed parents about the use of asthma medication one year after the child’s initial hospitalization.
A total of 86% of the children had a respiratory virus. Of these, 43% were infected with a respiratory syncytial virus, 32% with a rhinovirus, and 28% had other viruses.
Sixty-one percent of the kids who had been infected with a rhinovirus ended up using long-term asthma controller medication. In comparison, only 15% of the children who had respiratory syncytial virus and 36% of the children who had a different type of virus used long-term asthma medication.
In their research article, Bergroth and colleagues concluded, “Children hospitalized for rhinovirus-positive bronchiolitis used long-term asthma controller medication more often than those hospitalized for rhinovirus-negative bronchiolitis during the first year after hospitalization.”
