Antibiotic utilization in hospitalized children under 2 years of age with influenza or respiratory syncytial virus infection – a comparative, retrospective analysis

Respiratory tract infections (RTI) are the most common diagnoses in children, especially below the age of 2 years [1]. They substantially contribute to morbidity and mortality worldwide [2]. Furthermore, RTI are associated with large societal impacts [3], including a high health-economic burden [4], caused by a high hospitalization rate among the very young, causing frequent parental absence from work [5]. Moreover, antimicrobial consumption is heavily driven by RTI [6] due to the clinical challenge of distinguishing between viral and bacterial etiologies and the lack of a reliable diagnostic reference standard [7, 8]. Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programs are increasingly implemented [9] to counteract this antibiotic overuse which is strongly associated with the upsurge in antimicrobial resistance [10],

The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and the Influenza virus (FLU) account for the majority of RTI in infants leading to hospitalization [11, 12]. With the advent of novel point-of-care tests based on nucleic acid amplification, diagnostic accuracy and turnaround time of results have dramatically increased over the past years, both for RSV and FLU [13, 14]. Yet, there is only limited data indicating the potential clinical benefit of rapid viral testing as a tool of AMS in the hospital setting [15]. The overall quality of evidence was generally regarded low, making only for a “weak recommendation” in the latest Guidelines by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America for implementing an AMS program [16].

In a recent systematic review with meta-analysis, including both diagnostic accuracy studies and clinical impact studies, no firm conclusion could be made on the clinical impact of viral testing on antibiotic use due to the heterogeneity of the included studies [17], of which only two had included children.

Little is known about the factors that influence antibiotic prescription in patients with a positive RSV or FLU test. We sought to analyze the rate of antibiotic use in RSV and FLU patients and associated clinical and laboratory factors.

In this large retrospective four-season-analysis we present data on more than 570 children below the age of 2 years with RSV or FLU infection, demonstrating a high antibiotic use in a substantial proportion of children.

Recent systematic reviews with meta-analyses had shown that viral testing, including FLU and RSV, does not affect antibiotic prescription rates [17, 18], indicating that other factors pertaining to the decision-making of physicians need to be addressed by AMS measures.

Although RSV patients were significantly younger in our cohort, this apparently did not contribute to a higher rate of antibiotic utilization, as RSV children with antibiotics were significantly older than RSV children that did not receive antibiotics. Instead, driving factors for a potential antibiotic overuse were a high CRP, the presence of acute otitis media, septic appearance and the length of oxygen therapy.

FLU patients presented significantly more often with fever, febrile convulsions, acute otitis media, and upper respiratory tract infection or fever of unknown origin, while RSV patients presented significantly more often with a lower oxygen saturation, septic appearance, and lower respiratory tract infection or pneumonia.

We found higher rates of blood cultures obtained from FLU patients than from RSV patients, which in large part can be explained by the higher rate of febrile children in the FLU cohort, while chest radiographies were more frequently performed among those who received antibiotics within both groups. Interestingly, we found rates of chest infiltrates comparable between treated and non-treated patient groups. One possible explanation is that performing a chest radiograph serves as a surrogate for disease severity and hence influences the decision to prescribe antibiotics. In previous studies, it was hypothesized that less specific radiologic findings may have pushed physicians towards antibiotic treatment, even in the absence of infiltrates [19]. Still, it is generally advised against routinely performing chest radiographs in children who present with typical clinical findings of viral bronchiolitis, of which the majority is caused by RSV [20].

Male children were more predominant in both RSV and FLU cohorts, which had been reported similarly in previous studies [21], yet without convincing explanations so far [22]. Of note, the rate of antibiotic use before admission was 2.2 times higher among FLU patients, while during hospitalization, more RSV patients received antibiotics.

The antibiotic utilization in 28.6% of RSV and 22.1% of FLU patients respectively is lower than in comparable cohorts published in the recent past [23, 24], which may reflect a stronger reluctance to use antibiotics in children with point-of-care test confirmed viral infections at our hospital.

Complex medical comorbidities, such as chronic lung disease due to prematurity and congenital heart disease, are known risk factors for hospitalization due to RSV infection [25, 26]. In our cohort, we did not find any difference in these comorbidities between RSV and FLU patients.

The strengths of our study are the study size, allowing for robust statistical analyses, the long inclusion period, accounting for fluctuations of virus seasonality, and the consistency in standard of care during the inclusion period, thereby avoiding unwanted biasing effects.

Certain limitations of the study also merit critical appraisal. First, we obtained data retrospectively, bringing about the usual constraints and biases inherent to the nature of retrospective analyses. As such, we could not assess the effect of vaccination coverage, especially pertaining to influenza, on the study outcomes since these data were not systematically obtained. In Germany, currently no general recommendation for FLU vaccination for children exists, but only for those with chronic medical conditions. Secondly, no reference method was applied with regard to the correctness of antibiotic utilization. The correct judgement whether an antibiotic is warranted or not is hindered by the lack of a reference standard. Several methods exist to account for this, e.g. a panel of expert referees, blinded to each other, reviewing each case and adjudicating on the “correct” etiology, i.e. bacterial, viral, bacterial-viral co-infection, or unknown, as applied in other studies [21, 27]. Third, our cohort lacked an additional systematic viral testing beyond RSV and Influenza for all patients, making it impossible to judge whether other viruses, such as adenovirus, may have played a causative role, especially in cases with higher CRP [28]. Other viruses, albeit rarer, such as the human metapneumovirus, can be equally or even more associated with antibiotic overuse in children, as described by Schreiner and colleagues [29]. An extensive pathogen testing in conjunction with a control group of healthy children may have helped to better appraise the role of other viruses or bacteria, since some microorganisms can be found abundantly also in healthy controls [11], and the co-presence of some pathogens have been reported to correlate with disease severity [30]. Of note, O’Grady and colleagues had found that more than half of children with an acute respiratory infection had a viral-bacterial “co-detection” in nasal swabs, the bacterium in most cases being Haemophilus influenzae [31]. In another study in children with lower respiratory tract infections [32], the most common detected potentially pathogenic colonizers were Haemophilus influenzae (32.1%), Moraxella catharralis (26.7%), Staphylococcus aureus (17.7%) and Streptococcus pneumoniae (16.7%). Nevertheless, detection of bacterial colonizers may not help in the decision to initiate antibiotic therapy. Instead, there is evidence that the utilization of viral point-of-care diagnostics may prevent the usage of antibiotics [33, 34]. Overall, this fits well into the concept of diagnostic as well as antibiotic stewardship. Fourth, our cohort had a low case fatality rate, which reduces comparability to cohorts from other backgrounds, e.g. from low- and middle-income countries, where mortality may be higher [35]. Finally, the low baseline rate of antibiotic utilization may limit the generalizability of our results to other settings where the culture of prescribing antibiotics especially in infants and young children below the age of 2 years may differ [36] due to a lack of AMS or other reasons.

In light of the imperfection of both clinical features [7] and laboratory parameters such as CRP [37, 38], novel diagnostics measures are needed to better distinguish between viral and bacterial infections and thereby help reducing unwarranted antibiotic therapy. New host-protein based assays, e.g. combining CRP with Myxovirus resistance protein A [39], but also combinations of CRP and tumor-necrosis-factor related apoptosis inducing ligand and interferon-gamma induced protein 10, have shown very convincing results in studies [21, 40‐42], with high diagnostic accuracy and a potential to dampen unnecessary antibiotic use. Transcriptomic signatures have also shown to be very accurate in establishing the true etiology [43, 44], and although cost issues and turnaround times steadily improve [45], practical feasibility and implementation into the clinical workflow are persisting challenges still to be taken.

In summary, we show that clinical appearance on admission, the presence of otitis media, but also a high CRP and the length of oxygen therapy are the main factors associated with antibiotic use in our cohort of in children below the age of 2 years with RSV or FLU infection. It remains to be proven in prospective studies if AMS interventions aiming at viral testing, e.g. as multiplex PCR, in conjunction with more precise biomarkers or combinations thereof can help to effectively reduce antibiotic treatment in children with RSV infection and Influenza.