Bronchiolitis following infection in adults and children.

Since its recognition as a clinical entity in the 1940s, our knowledge of bronchiolitis has grown with respect to the breadth of disease, epidemiology, treatment, and long-term effects. Bronchiolitis occurs most commonly in infants and children in association with a predictably small number of respiratory pathogens. Our knowledge of the association of bronchiolitis to subsequent wheezing is in a state of evolution. Rarely, bronchiolitis may progress to a chronic obstructive process, bronchiolitis obliterans, seen most often following adenovirus infection. The diagnosis of bronchiolitis in adults is relatively rare and although specific information on etiologic agents is lacking, it is not unlikely that the implicated infectious agents in infant bronchiolitis may play a role in the adult form of the disease. Bronchiolitis obliterans in adults occurs as a result of many possible causes, including infection. Although infection probably contributes to the pathogenesis of bronchiolitis obliterans in the post-organ-transplant population, this process appears to be a complex interaction centering around graft rejection.