Over the past few years there have been an increasing number of research articles published in Thorax on respiratory tract infections (including tuberculosis) affecting children and adults. Although these articles cover a wide variety of areas, several broad themes can be discerned. These include greater interest in viral respiratory infections (partially stimulated by the recent influenza A pandemic), improved characterisation of who is at risk of community-acquired pneumonia and mycobacterial infection, research into better diagnostics and attempts to develop new or improved scoring scales for a range of respiratory infection syndromes.
There have also been a limited number of articles on how to manage patients with respiratory infection, including describing the efficacy of prevention b...