Treatment for RSV

* In September, the prestigious American Academy of Pediatrics published a scientific paper recommending to physicians the antiviral drug Virazole (ribavirin) for aerosol treatment of high-risk and seriously ill children who have been hospitalized with severe lower-tract infection caused by respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

In its recommendation, the 12 physicians on the academy’s Committee on Infectious Diseases stressed that “experience in more than 100,000 patients indicates that aerosolized ribavirin treatment for RSV infection is both safe and effective.”

That is why we find it particularly misleading to those who may benefit from Virazole therapy to say, as your medical writer said in “Treatment Lessens Danger of Common Infant Ailment” (Nov. 18), about Virazole and RSV, that “the drug has limited value and often serious side effects.”

NILS JOHANNESSON MD

President, Viratek, Inc.

Costa Mesa