Complications of seasonal viral infections on a world scale

 

Ugnė Žilinskaitė1, Miglė Grinevičiūtė1

1 Respublikinė Kauno ligoninė

 

Abstract

Background and aim: seasonal viral infections make us worry about the course of the disease and its complications which can cause death. So the aim of this article is to talk about the most typical seasonal viral infections: influenza, parainfluenza, coronavirus diseases which can cause acute complications and about the rates of deaths in the population from these infections.

Materials and methods: descriptive analysis was performed. Data were collected from March to April in 2020 from „PubMed“ and,, Google scholar” databases. Only the articles from the past 10 years were used, an exception was made for the articles about SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV due to lack of literature. Also selected articles had to have the research about viral infection and its complications.

Results and conclusion: seasonal viral infections’ symptoms can vary from common cold symptoms (runny nose, fever, cough) to diarrhea, vomiting or even disorders of coagulation. Those infections can sometimes cause pneumonia or neurological, mental disorders, especially to older patients or for kids who have more serious health problems. One of the most common influenza complications found was pneumonia, caused by S.aureus ir S.pneumonia. Complications often are more common for people older than 65 years, for the ones with severe comorbidities and in case of influenza complications more often occur when a person is not vaccinated.

Keywords: viral infections, viral seasonality, viral complications, influenza, parainfluenza, human respiratory system infections, coronavirus disease, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, COVID-19.