Molecular typing of adenovirus circulating in a Colombian paediatric population with acute respiratory infection

Abstract

Human adenoviruses (HAdV) cause a broad spectrum of diseases including acute respiratory infection (ARI), and are responsible for 5% of cases requiring hospitalization in children aged <5 years in Colombia; however, little is known about the circulating types, partly due to the lack of reliable typing tests. In order to evaluate a VA gene PCR-sequencing approach for identification of HAdV circulating types in a Colombian population, 52 nasopharyngeal aspirates/swabs from children with ARI were processed. After a BLAST analysis, matches with species B (41/48, 85·42%), C (6/48, 12·5%), and D (1/48, 2·08%) were found; and at the type level, type 3 (22/48, 45·83%) was the most frequent. This initial effort to expand our knowledge about the molecular epidemiology of HAdV circulating in Bogota, Colombia, showed that HAdV-B was the predominant circulating species in the study period and reports, for the first time in Colombia, the presence of HAdV-D in a respiratory sample.