Rhinovirus is associated with severe adult community-acquired pneumonia in China

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a heterogeneous disease causing great mortality and morbidity and high costs worldwide. Etiologies, disease courses, and outcomes are highly variable in CAP patients. Anti-bacterial infection therapies are widely accepted as the principle therapeutic regimen for CAP. However, new molecular diagnostic assays, such as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, have increased the ability to detect respiratory viruses over the past 10 years. According to published studies, viruses account for 29–55% of CAP cases among adults (1-5) and the most common virus detected is human rhinovirus (HRV) (4.9–30.6%) (2,3,5). Mountain reports now indicate that HRV can be an independent causative pathogen of pneumonia, even severe pneumonia (6-8). However, by now we still knew few about the characteristics of HRV-associated pneumonia, especially CAP