Respiratory Syncytial Virus-Load Kinetics and Clinical Course of Acute Bronchiolitis in Hospitalized Infants: Interim Results and Review of the Literature piccirilli2023respiratory
Prospective monocentric observational study in Bologna, Italy (IRCCS Policlinico di Sant’Orsola) enrolling previously healthy infants (≤1 year) hospitalized for a first episode of RSV bronchiolitis (Mar 2019–Nov 2021). Nasopharyngeal aspirates were collected at admission (d0) and every 48 hours during hospitalization; RSV-positive-only samples were quantified retrospectively by RT-qPCR targeting the RSV matrix gene and normalized to human DNA (reported as log10 copies/ng hDNA). This extraction uses the provided figure-derived CSV time series (PatientID-level) with time in days from hospital admission.
Analytes
nasopharyngeal_aspirate_RSV_viral_load
RSV RNA quantified from nasopharyngeal aspirate (NPA) using nucleic acid extraction (NucliSENS easyMag; 200 µL input eluted in 50 µL) followed by home-made RT-qPCR TaqMan assay on LIAISON MDX targeting RSV matrix gene; quantification via standard curve from synthetic 770 bp matrix-gene fragment; viral load normalized by human DNA quantified via NanoDrop and reported as log10 copies/ng human DNA (hDNA). CSV values provided are treated as already-converted linear-scale quantities for this extraction.
Fitted by censored maximum likelihood. The red line is the median individual; the shaded region is the full range of a simulated cohort drawn from the fitted population, so it shows what simulating from this dataset would produce rather than a confidence interval, with dashed lines at the central 95%. Open triangles are non-detects, drawn at the censoring limit and entering the fit as "below this value" rather than being dropped. See the modelling methods for what these estimates do and do not support.