Rates of Isolation of Viruses from a Wide Spectrum of Clinical Specimens

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Abstract
Over a period of almost 9 years, 4,095 viruses were isolated from 31,361 specimens, including every type that might be sent to a microbial diagnostic laboratory. It can be concluded that viral disease as seen in routine medical practice is largely related to respiratory disease, that most viruses are from ambulatory patients, and that dermal lesions yield the highest percentage of virus isolations, with oropharyngeal specimens including throat swabs originally sent for bacterial culture only) yielding the next highest percentage. Dermal and oropharyngeal specimens represented almost 77% of the specimens submitted and produced almost 94% of the viruses isolated. Generally, urine and cerebrospinal fluid specimens were not highly productive of virus isolations; feces, brain tissue, pulmonary tissue, and eye swabs each produced virus isolations less than 8% of the time. Most tissues from autopsy or surgical procedures yielded no viruses.

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