Pulmonary enterovirus infections in stem cell transplant recipients

In recent years, it has been recognised that the community respiratory viru ses are a frequent cause of upper and lower respiratory tract infections in immunocompromised hosts such as bone marrow transplant recipients, By cont rast, infections by non-polio enteroviruses have rarely been reported after stem cell transplantation. We present four cases of acute respiratory illn ess with enterovirus isolated as the sole pathogen from bronchoalveolar lav age, All four patients developed pneumonia and three died of progressive pn eumonia, which reflects the severity of this complication. We conclude that enteroviral pulmonary infections may be a cause of severe pneumonia in imm unocompromised hosts.