The Emerging Landscape of Respiratory Viral Infections in Immunocompromised Children

TL;DR

This paper reviews how respiratory viruses affect children with weakened immune systems, focusing on diagnosis and management challenges.

Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive overview of respiratory viral infections in immunocompromised children, emphasizing clinical interpretation challenges.

Findings

Respiratory viral infections are increasingly detected in immunocompromised children due to advanced molecular diagnostics.

Clinical interpretation of viral detection is complicated by mild symptoms and prolonged viral shedding.

Viral detection impacts infection control, antimicrobial use, and cancer therapy timing in pediatric patients.

Abstract

Respiratory viral infections are commonly manifested in children with hematological malignancies, solid tumors, and those undergoing hematopoietic or solid organ transplantation. Advances in cancer therapy and the introduction of novel therapeutics have increased the number of children with immune suppression, thereby making respiratory viruses a major clinical challenge. Moreover, modern molecular diagnostic tests can detect respiratory viruses more frequently, even in cases when symptoms are mild or absent, creating several uncertainties concerning the clinical relevance of viral detection and the way that these results should be interpreted and guide patient management. In this literature review, we provide an overview of current evidence on respiratory viral infections in immunocompromised pediatric patients, with a particular focus on epidemiology, clinical manifestations, molecular diagnosis, and how the molecular viral diagnostics can affect clinical decisions such as antibiotic use, infection control, and timing of cancer therapy administration. Therefore, understanding how to interpret viral test results in this context is crucial to improving the outcomes for this vulnerable patient group.

Respiratory viral infections (RVIs) have been described traditionally as clinically important infectious complications in pediatric patients with immunosuppression, particularly in those with malignancies (hematological or solid) and recipients of hematopoietic cell or solid organ transplantation. Specifically, advances in the field of cancer therapy and novel immune-based pharmaceuticals have significantly expanded the population of children with prolonged and complex immunosuppression, whereas the widespread use and availability of molecular diagnostics have increased the detection of respiratory viruses. Additionally, these developments have improved the etiologic identification of RVIs, while introducing important challenges in clinical interpretation, mainly in differentiating incidental viral identification from clinically significant diseases. Furthermore, RVIs in immunocompromised children are characterized by heterogeneous and diverse clinical manifestations, with a range from mild upper respiratory tract involvement to severe lower respiratory tract disease, which can lead to substantial morbidity and mortality. Diagnostic strategies in this field are primarily based on nucleic acid amplification tests, requiring careful interpretation because of the possible prolonged viral shedding, co-detection, and overlapping infectious syndromes. Beyond direct clinical consequences, viral detection has an impact on infection control measures, antimicrobial stewardship decisions, and the timing of therapies. In this literature review, we offer an overview of current evidence on the epidemiology, clinical manifestations, diagnostic approaches, and management of RVIs in immunocompromised pediatric populations, underscoring the unmet need for structured, risk-adapted integration of virologic data into pediatric oncology care.

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