New research indicates that community-acquired pneumonia should not be regarded as a seasonal disease, as it occurs throughout all seasons; however, the pathogens that cause the condition are clearly subject to seasonal variations.

In the observational study carried out in the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, Spain, community-acquired pneumonia occurred more frequently in the winter than in other individual seasons, but two-thirds of cases occurred in spring, autumn, and summer combined.

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“To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive analysis of seasonal variations of aetiology, based on prospectively collected data over 12 years of a large population with community-acquired pneumonia,” wrote the authors of the Respirology study.

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