Viral Upper Respiratory Tract Infection and Otitis Media Complication in Young Children

Viral infections in children are very com-mon and raise huge problems of man-agement. The burden of these infections is difficult to quantify because of the lack of pathognomonic features. There is a clear need to know the characteristics of these infections to give directions for care and possibly to provide specific treat-ments, prevention, and prophylaxis. In this issue of Clinical Infectious Dis-eases, Chonmaitree et al. [1] conducted a large, longitudinal observational study of children with upper respiratory infection and examined for otitis complication— either acute otitis media or otitis medi