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Contains fulltext : 287914.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access), Since the beginning of 2020, a remarkably low incidence of respiratory virus hospitalizations has been reported worldwide. We prospectively evaluated 587 children, aged <12 years, admitted for respiratory tract infections from 1 September 2021 to 15 March 2022 in four Italian pediatric hospitals to assess the burden of respiratory viruses during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. At admission, a Clinical Respiratory Score was assigned and nasopharyngeal or nasal washing samples were collected and tested for respiratory viruses. Total admissions increased from the second half of October 2021 to the first half of December 2021 with a peak in early November 2021. The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) incidence curve coincided with the total hospitalizations curve, occurred earlier than in the pre-pandemic years, and showed an opposite trend with respect to the incidence rate of SARS-CoV-2. Our results demonstrated an early peak in pediatric hospitalizations for RSV. SARS-CoV-2 may exhibit a competitive pressure on other respiratory viruses, most notably RSV.

This is a retrospective multicenter nationwide Italian study collecting neonatal anthropometric data of Caucasian subjects with Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) born from 1988 to 2018. The aim of the study is to provide percentile charts for weight and length of singletons with PWS born between 36 and 42 gestational weeks. We collected the birth weight and birth length of 252 male and 244 female singleton live born infants with both parents of Italian origin and PWS genetically confirmed. Percentile smoothed curves of birth weight and length for gestational age were built through Cole's lambda, mu, sigma method. The data were compared to normal Italian standards. Newborns with PWS showed a lower mean birth weight, by 1/2 kg, and a shorter mean birth length, by 1 cm, than healthy neonates. Females with a 15q11-13 deletion were shorter than those with maternal uniparental maternal disomy of chromosome 15 (p <.0001). The present growth curves may be useful as further traits in supporting a suspicion of PWS in a newborn. Because impaired prenatal growth increases risk of health problems later in life, having neonatal anthropometric standards could be helpful to evaluate possible correlations between the presence or absence of small gestational age and some clinical and metabolic aspects of PWS.