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Several reports highlighted how public health measures aimed at limiting severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) circulation have likely contributed to reducing the circulation of other respiratory viruses, particularly during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We evaluated the epidemiology of acute respiratory infections in a large cohort of hospitalized children during the third year of the pandemic (2021–2022). We retrospectively analyzed data from the health records of children (<14 years) hospitalized for acute respiratory infections between 1 July 2021 and 31 March 2022. A total of 1763 respiratory panels were collected. Overall, 1269 (72%) panels hadpositive results for at least one pathogen. Most positive panels (53.8%) belonged to patients aged 1–12 months. The most detected pathogen was respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) (57.8% of positive panels). The RSV peak occurred in November 2021. Nine hundred and forty-five (74.5%) panels were positive for one pathogen while three hundred and twenty-four (25.5%) showed multiple infections. Patients with multiple infections were significantly older than those with a single infection. The 2021–2022 peak of RSV infection in Italy occurred earlier than in the previous pre-pandemic seasons. A high number of children have been hospitalized because of acute viral infections also due to less aggressive viruses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vertical transmission of human papillomaviruses (HPVs) from mother to infant is known to occur during labor, delivery or breastfeeding. Infection with mucosal HPV 6 and 11 may cause recurrent respiratory papillomatosis in children, which is a rare and severe respiratory disease. The cutaneous HPV genotypes have also been described to be transmitted from mother to newborn through skin-to-skin contacts and during breastfeeding. To investigate the perinatal transmission of alpha and beta HPVs we collected nasopharyngeal specimens from 0–12-months-old infants born by vaginal delivery and breastfed at the time of sample collection. The mucosal and cutaneous HPVs were searched by nested PCR using the MY09/11-MGPs and CP65/70-CP66/69 primer sets, respectively, and genotypes identified by direct sequencing analysis. Fourteen out of 113 (12.4%) samples tested positive for HPV and sequence analysis allowed us to identify eight beta genotypes (HPV 5b, 20, 25, 100, 107, 124, 152 and RTRX7). Moreover, we performed a comprehensive review of published studies on the prevalence of mucosal and cutaneous HPVs among 5126 newborns and observed that 10% and 53% were positive for alpha and beta HPVs, respectively. In all studies there was an inverse correlation between the rate of alpha HPV positivity and age, while a significant positive trend was observed in beta HPV detection and age with the highest rate among children older than 12 months (Χ2 test for trend of 10.6, p < 0.001). Further studies are needed to confirm the hypothesis that beta HPVs are transmitted to breastfeeding infants through shedding of viruses in the breast milk or on the external breast epithelium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]