Abstract: OBJECTIVE To analyze the epidemiological characteristics of pathogens causing respiratory tract infections in children in this region so as to provide etiological bases for precise clinical diagnosis and treatment as well as development of control strategies. METHODS The children with respiratory tract infections who were treated in People's Hospital of Tongling from Jan. 2024 to Dec. 2024 were recruited as the research subjects. The nucleic acid test for the major respiratory tract pathogens isolated from throat swab specimens was carried out by targeted next generation metagenomic sequencing (tNGS) technique. RESULTS Totally 3319 children were enrolled in the study, the positive rate was 98.16%, and 8845 species-times of pathogens were accumulatively identified. The distribution of etiological distribution showed that bacteria accounted for 54.92%, viruses 38.20%, atypical pathogens 6.87%. In terms of the distribution of predominant pathogens, Haemophilus influenzae (47.33%), Moraxella catarrhalis (29.41%) and Streptococcus pneumoniae (24.68%) ranked the top 3 species of bacteria for the isolation rates. Rhinovirus (26.54%), adenovirus (11.81%) and respiratory syncytial virus (8.71%) ranked the top 3 types of viruses in isolation rates. Mycoplasma pneumoniae (14.70%) ranked the first place of atypical pathogens. The isolation rates of the pathogens vary with the age, the infant period represented a high-incidence stage for both viruses and bacteria, Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae were the major species of bacterial pathogens during the toddler and preschool age, meanwhile the rhinovirus and Mycoplasma pneumoniae were common. The school age was the peak for the isolation rate of M. pneumoniae. The prevalence of pathogens exhibited seasonal characteristics: the rhinovirus infection was predominant in spring and autumn, winter was the peak for infections with influenza and RSV, while the Haemophilus influenzae infection was highly prevalence in the whole year. CONCLUSIONS The bacterial pathogens are dominant among the pathogens isolated from the children with respiratory tract infections in this region in 2024, and H. influenzae is the most common pathogen.