Influenza and respiratory syncytial viral infections in Malaysia: Demographic and clinical perspective

Objective: respiratory infections represent a major public health problem worldwide. the study aimed to determine the prevalence of respiratory syncytial and influenza virus infections and analyzed in respect to demography and clinical perspective. methods: the specimens were processed by cell culture and immunofluorescent assay (ifa) and real-time reverse transcriptase-pcr (rrt-pcr) for detection of respiratory viruses. results: out of 505 specimens 189 (37.8%) were positive, in which rsv was positive in 124(24.8%) cases and influenza a was positive in 65(13%) cases. positive cases for influenza virus a and rsv were analyzed based on demography: age, gender, ethnicity and clinical symptoms. there were no significant differences among gender, ethnicity and clinical symptoms in both rsv and influenza a virus infections. it was observed that children below 3 years of ages were more prone to rsv infections. on the contrary, influenza virus a infected all age groups of humans. conclusion: rsv infects mostly child below 3 years of age and influenza virus infects all age group. no specificity of rsv and influenza infection in relation to demography.