Abstract
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a common cause of respiratory tract infections among children less than 5 years of age and the elderly. This study intended to determine the circulating genotypes of RSV among severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) cases during the period 2016–2018 in India, among hospitalized acute febrile illness cases of age ranging from 1 to 65 years. Throat/nasopharyngeal swab samples were subjected for testing RSV and subgroups by real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), further sequencing and phylogenetic analysis were performed for the second hypervariable region of the G gene. RSV-A and B subtypes co-circulated during the years 2016, 2017, and 2018, with RSV-A as the dominant subtype in 2016, and RSV-B as the dominant subgroup in 2017 and 2018. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the circulating genotypes of RSV were GA2 (16/16), of RSV-A, and GB5 (23/23) of RSV-B in the South, North, and Northeast region of India during the period between 2016 and 2018. Here we report the first study comprising the distribution of RSV-A and B genotypes in the different geographic regions of India among children and adults during the year 2016 to 2018. We also report GA2.3.7 lineage of GA2 genotype for the first time in India to the best of our knowledge.
Highlights
Acute lower respiratory tract infections are the major cause of hospitalization and death among children less than 5 years of age, with Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) being an important viral pathogen causing the infection worldwide [1, 2]
A total of 151 RSV-positive archived samples have been included in this study and cases from 10 states of India; Karnataka, Kerala, Assam, Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Tripura, Tamil Nadu and Odisha depicted in (Fig. 1) under Acute Febrile Illness (AFI) surveillance study conducted by Manipal Institute of Virology (MIV), with a case definition of patients admitted to hospital with fever (≥ 38 °C) of age between 1 and 65 years were recruited and samples were tested for various viral pathogens including RSV, bacterial and parasite agents by molecular and serological methods [24]
Among AFI cases recruited, a total of 151 samples tested positive for RSV by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) during the period 2016 to 2018, out of 10 states, the major number of cases, 62 cases (41.1%) were from Tamil Nadu, 30 (19.9%) from Karnataka, and 20 (13.2%) from Assam were represented in (Table 1)
Summary
Acute lower respiratory tract infections are the major cause of hospitalization and death among children less than 5 years of age, with RSV being an important viral pathogen causing the infection worldwide [1, 2]. Previous studies estimate that annually about 33.1 million RSV infections occur, among which about 3.2 million are hospitalized cases with around 59,600 deaths occurring in children younger than 5 years [3]. Present Address: Vaikathu, Athrady, Udupi, Karnataka 576107, India individuals of any age group, RSV infections even lead to morbidity and mortality among the elderly [5]. In India, RSV infections are observed during monsoons, which peaks during September and October months [12,13,14,15]
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