Detecting human adenoviruses in respiratory samples collected from children with acute respiratory infections by loop-mediated isothermal amplification

Abstract

To establish a rapid and reliable loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) method for detecting adenoviruses (ADV)in respiratory samples collected from children with acute respiratory infections. According to the sequences of hexon genes of common adenovirus serotypes (Ad3, Ad7, and Ad14) downloaded from GenBank, primers were designed and LAMP method for detecting adenovirus DNA was developed. Sensitivity of the LAMP method was evaluated by using constructed recombinant plasmid DNA with gene fragment from hexon of ADV3, and specificity was tested through cross-reaction with other viruses. Then 11 ADV strains isolated from clinical specimens using tissue cultures were tested by LAMP method. A total of 108 nasopharyngeal aspirates from hospitalized patients with acute respiratory infections which had been tested by direct immunofluorescence assay (DFA), including 36 for ADV positive and 72 for ADV negative, were tested by both LAMP method and multiplex nested PCR. Analysis for sensitivity indicated that this LAMP method can detect 1.9×10(2)copies/ml of DNA, and no amplification was shown in DNA or cDNA of other viruses, which revealed that the specificity of the LAMP method is high. For 108 specimens which had been tested by DFA, 34 out of the 36 ADV positive specimens showed positive signal within 90 minutes using LAMP. Five out of 72 negative specimens by DFA were positive using LAMP; 39 out of the 41 ADV positive specimens by multiplex nested PCR showed positive signal using LAMP, including 19 for Ad3 and 20 for Ad7; 67 negative specimens confirmed by multiplex nested PCR showed negative signal using LAMP. The total consistency rate of DFA and LAMP method for detecting ADV was 93.5%, and the total coincidence rate of multiplex nested PCR and LAMP method for detecting ADV was 98.1%. A new, sensitive, accurate and rapid method for detecting human adenovirus from nasopharyngeal aspirates by LAMP was developed, which should be a potential method for rapid detection of ADV from respiratory tract of children in clinical diagnosis of ADV infection.