Viral shedding and immune responses to respiratory syncytial virus infection in older adults walsh2013viral
Observational study of RSV infection in adults (Rochester, New York; winters 2005–2008) including outpatients (mild disease) and hospitalized patients (severe disease). RSV RNA was detected by real-time RT-PCR and viral titers were quantified by quantitative RT-PCR and expressed as PFU equivalents per mL. Serial respiratory specimens were collected during illness (daily when possible) until two consecutive RT-PCR negative samples; additional planned follow-ups occurred around days 12–16 and 25–32 after symptom onset. Figure-derived CSV data provide individual-level PFU/mL viral load measurements over time for a subset of participants. The data used here were extracted from Supplementary Figures 3 of “Relating In Vivo Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection Kinetics to Host Infectiousness in Different Age Groups,” which digitized and re-plotted the original viral-load curves from this study.
Analytes
pfu_ml
Quantitative RSV viral load expressed as plaque-forming unit (PFU) equivalents per mL of sample, determined by quantitative RSV RT-PCR on respiratory specimens (nasal swab/sputum per methods); CSV provides time-series PFU/mL values including negatives.
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.