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ABSTRACTHuman metapneumovirus (hMPV) infections occur frequently despite high rates of perpetual seroprevalence for all age groups. Analyses of ~2,000 archived, randomly selected serum samples demonstrated that neutralizing capacities remain high, with a minor decrease for individuals over 69 years of age, leading to the hypothesis that reinfections occur because humoral immune responses play minor roles in the clearance of hMPV infections.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus and human coronavirus-NL63, though both belonging to different groups of the same genus, are interesting representatives of their kind; the first one is of zoonotic origin, accounted for the pandemic in 2002/2003 that was distributed worldwide and had a mortality rate of about 10%, the other one was identified later and probably has been circulating within the population for centuries and belongs to those viruses that cause the ‘common cold’. A lot of effort has been made to investigate both viruses and to understand their differences and their similarities with regard to further zoonotic events. This review gives an overview of severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus and human coronavirus-NL63, their history and the current state of research.