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This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: vir.0.014449-0v1 90/12/2965    most recent Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via CrossRef Google Scholar Articles by Kapoor, A. Articles by Delwart, E. PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Kapoor, A. Articles by Delwart, E. Agricola Articles by Kapoor, A. Articles by Delwart, E.

Multiple novel astrovirus species in human stool

¹ Department of Laboratory Medicine, University of California San Francisco, and Blood Systems Research Institute, San Francisco, CA, USA
² WHO National Polio Laboratory, University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, Borno State, Nigeria
³ Department of Enteric Diseases, Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences, Bangkok, Thailand
⁴ CIWEC Clinic Travel Medicine Center, Kathmandu, Nepal
⁵ Department of Virology, National Institute of Health, Islamabad, Pakistan

Correspondence
E. Delwart
delwarte{at}medicine.ucsf.edu

Diarrhoea remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in developing countries where numerous cases remain without identified aetiology. Astroviruses are a recently identified cause of animal gastroenteritis which currently includes two species suspected of causing human diarrhoea. Using pan-astrovirus RT-PCR, we analysed human stool samples from different continents for astrovirus-related RNA sequences. We identified variants of the two known human astrovirus species plus, based on genetic distance criteria, three novel astrovirus species all distantly related to mink and ovine astroviruses, which we provisionally named HMOAstV species A–C. The complete genome of species A displayed all the conserved characteristics of mammalian astroviruses. Each of the now three groups of astroviruses found in human stool (HAstV, AstV-MLB and HMOAstV) were more closely related to animal astroviruses than to each other, indicating that human astroviruses may periodically emerge from zoonotic transmissions. Based on the pathogenic impact of their closest phylogenetic relatives in animals, further investigations of the role of HMOAstV, so far detected in Nigeria, Nepal and Pakistan, in human gastroenteritis are warranted.

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers of the sequences reported here are GQ415660 [GenBank] –GQ415662 [GenBank] and GQ441158 [GenBank] –GQ441192.