Understanding Rhinovirus Circulation and Impact on Illness

Abstract

Rhinoviruses (RVs) have been reported as one of the main viral causes for severe respiratory illnesses that may require hospitalization, competing with the burden of other respiratory viruses such as influenza and RSV in terms of severity, economic cost, and resource utilization. With three species and 169 subtypes, RV presents the greatest diversity within the Enterovirus genus, and despite the efforts of the research community to identify clinically relevant subtypes to target therapeutic strategies, the role of species and subtype in the clinical outcomes of RV infection remains unclear. This review aims to collect and organize data relevant to RV illness in order to find patterns and links with species and/or subtype, with a specific focus on species and subtype diversity in clinical studies typing of respiratory samples.

Keywords: asthma; childhood; circulation; genotyping; respiratory; rhinovirus; serotyping; typing; virulence.

Figure 1

RV subtype contribution to total detections in a panel of 31 clinical studies typing RVs. RV subtypes are shown ranked highest to lowest for their contribution of total RV detections in the panel of 20 studies. When several subtypes are listed together, they each contribute to the same percentage of total detections.