To the Editor—The recent report on ‘co-infection of influenza B and Streptococcus’ by Lam et al1 is very interesting. They reported “four cases infected with influenza B and streptococci that gave rise to severe pneumonia” and mentioned that “this is the second case report of severe invasive pneumococcal pneumonia secondary to influenza B infection.”1 Indeed, both influenza B and Streptococcus ...

We characterized influenza B virus-related neurologic manifestations in an unusually high number of hospitalized adults at a tertiary care facility in Romania during the 2014-15 influenza epidemic season. Of 32 patients with a confirmed laboratory diagnosis of influenza B virus infection, neurologic complications developed in 7 adults (median age 31 years). These complications were clinically d...

Acute encephalitis and postinfectious encephalopathy have been reported infrequently in association with influenza A and B virus infections. We report herein a case of a 6-year-old girl with acute influenza B virus encephalitis resulting in neurological sequelae. The diagnosis was made by isolation of influenza B virus from the nasopharynx, seroconversion to influenza B, and reverse transcripti...

Rapid and specific diagnosis of influenza A/B and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) viruses is needed for optimal management of patients with acute respiratory infections. In this study, a one-step triplex real-time RT-PCR assay was developed for rapid diagnosis of influenza A/B and RSV infections to optimize diagnosis efficiency of acute respiratory infections. Cell-culture supernatants and cl...

Influenza is a contagious respiratory illness that causes significant human morbidity and mortality, affecting 5-15% of the population in a typical epidemic season. Human influenza epidemics are caused by types A and B, with roughly 25% of human cases due to influenza B. Influenza B is a single-stranded RNA virus with a high mutation rate, and both prior immune history and vaccination put signi...

Rapid influenza diagnostic tests (RIDTs) are commonly used by clinicians to guide patient management. Data on sensitivities among hospitalized patients are limited. Here, we evaluated the clinical and virologic factors affecting the sensitivities of 2 commercially available RIDTs (BinaxNOW Influenza A&B and QuickVue Influenza A+B) on nasopharyngeal aspirate (NPA) specimens collected from elderl...

BACKGROUND There is some evidence that annual vaccination of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) may lead to reduced vaccine immunogenicity but evidence is lacking on whether vaccine efficacy is affected by prior vaccination history. The efficacy of one dose of TIV in children 6-8 y of age against influenza B is uncertain. We examined whether immunogenicity and efficacy of influenza v...

Arbidol is superior over remantadine as regards a wide antiviral spectrum, shows a pronounced chemotherapeutical effect against influenza A/B viruses in a cell culture and on an experimental influenzal pneumonia, induced by A/B viruses. Remantadine is efficient only against influenza A virus, but it is inefficient against influenza B virus. In addition, in the experiment, the resistivity of inf...

Background: Pandemic influenza A viruses are often zoonotic. Rapid influenza virus diagnostics can play a role in reducing pandemic virus spread. However, most diagnostic tests have not been evaluated against animal influenza viruses. Objective: To evaluate a leading rapid diagnostic test against zoonotic influenza A virus strains. Study Design: We evaluated the performance of the QuickVue® Inf...