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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2005;294:1331.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Lower respiratory tract infections are a leading cause of hospitalization in infants and children but in 12% to 39% of cases, the cause is unknown. Now, scientists from Sweden and Singapore have reported identifying a previously unknown virus that causes lower respiratory tract infections in the pediatric population. Their report was published on August 22 in an online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (http://www.pnas.org).

Using molecular techniques to search for unknown viruses in nasopharyngeal aspirates from patients with respiratory tract infections, the researchers detected 7 virus species, including an unknown parvovirus that they named human bocavirus. They then tested samples from 540 children who had been hospitalized for lower respiratory tract infections and found that 17 of the children had been infected with human bocavirus, all but 3 of whom tested negative for other . . . [Full Text of this Article]