Journal of Infectious Diseases & Therapy
Open Access

Research Article

Prevalence of Pandemic Influenza a (H1N1) Virus and Cytomegalovirus Co- Existence at an Early Stage in Evangelismos Hospital-ICU Patients

Magira EE^1*, Asimakos A¹, Grispou E² and Zakynthinos S¹

¹First Department of Critical Care, Evangelismos Hospital, School of Medicine, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

²Department of Molecular Biology, Evangelismos Hospital, School of Medicine, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

*Corresponding Author:

Eleni E Magira
First Department of Critical Care
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School
50 Marathonos St, Vrilisia Athens 15235, Greece
Tel: +302107488164
Fax: 011302107488164
E-mail: elmagira@yahoo.com

Received date: June 20, 2017; Accepted date: July 04, 2017; Published date: July 07, 2017

Citation: Magira EE, Asimakos A, Grispou E, Zakynthinos S (2017) Prevalence of Pandemic Influenza a (H1N1) Virus and Cytomegalovirus Co-Existence at an Early Stage in Evangelismos Hospital-ICU Patients. J Infect Dis Ther 5:323. doi: 10.4172/2332-0877.1000323

Copyright: © 2017 Eleni E Magira, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Objective: Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections in immunocompetent ICU patients have been associated with poor outcomes. We determined the distribution of cytomegalovirus coinfection among patients admitted in the ICU1 of Evangelismos Hospital of Athens with or diagnosed with pandemic influenza A (H1N1) respiratory infection.

Patients: We examined retrospectively 33 ICU consequently patients with community or hospital-acquired pulmonary infection. Investigation of viral-viral coinfection rate was determined at the first 48 h after ICU admission.

Results: A total of 13 patients that received a diagnosis of influenza A (H1N1) had their diagnosis confirmed by influenza A rapid antigen testing and/or by influenza A (H1N1) polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Only three out of the 13 H1N1 positive patients were cytomegalovirus bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL)-PCR positive and 10 were negative. Additionally 2 out of the 20 H1N1 negative patients were CMV-BAL-PCR positive.

Conclusion: We did not find significant CMV distribution in our H1N1 positive patients at least at the early 4-5 days period after H1N1 infection. However, the study is interesting because patients with a combination of H1N1 and CMV infections have been described only rarely. The scarce presence of CMV in H1N1 patients may suggest that endogenous reactivation of CMV infection within the lungs does occur and that these patients may profit from antiviral therapy. The interplay between host and viruses is very complex and therefore the triggering for the CMV disease activation following H1N1 pneumonia is possible to require more than the absolute presents of the H1N1 virus especially in the ICU patients.

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