Respiratory viruses are continuously detected in children with chronic tonsillitis throughout the year.

Objective: To evaluate the oscillations on the viral detection in adenotonsillar tissues from patients with chronic adenotonsillar diseases as an indicia of the presence of persistent viral infections or acute subclinical infections.

Study Design: Cross-sectional prospective study.

Setting: Tertiary hospital.

Methods: The fluctuations of respiratory virus detection were compared to the major climatic variables during a two-year period using adenoids and palatine tonsils from 172 children with adenotonsillar hypertrophy and clinical evidence of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome or recurrent adenotonsillitis, without symptoms of acute respiratory infection (ARI), by TaqMan real-time PCR.

Results: The rate of detection of at least one respiratory virus in adenotonsillar tissue was 87%. The most frequently detected viruses were human adenovirus in 52.8%, human enterovirus in 47.2%, human rhinovirus in 33.8%, human bocavirus in 31.1%, human metapneumovirus in 18.3% and human respiratory syncytial virus in 17.2%. Although increased detection of human enterovirus occurred in summer/autumn months, and there were summer nadirs of human respiratory syncytial virus in both years of the study, there was no obvious viral seasonality in contrast to reports with ARI patients in many regions of the world.

Conclusion: Respiratory viruses are continuously highly detected during whole year, and without any clinical symptomatology, indicating that viral genome of some virus can persist in lymphoepithelial tissues of the upper respiratory tract.