Skip to main content
PMC home page
Virologica Sinica logoLink to Virologica Sinica
. 2013 Apr 11;28(2):103–108. doi: 10.1007/s12250-013-3308-7

Identification and typing of respiratory adenoviruses in Guangzhou, Southern China using a rapid and simple method

Guiyuan Han 13308, Hongling Niu 13308, Suhui Zhao 13308, Bing Zhu 23308, Changbing Wang 23308, Yungang Liu 13308, Mingjie Zhang 13308, Shu Yang 13308, Feitong Liu 13308, Chengsong Wan 13308, Qiwei Zhang 13308,✉
PMCID: PMC8208335  PMID: 23575732

Abstract

Human adenoviruses (HAdVs), especially HAdV-B3, -E4 and -B7, are associated with Acute Respiratory Disease in Chinese children, and occasionally in adults. In order to establish and document the profiles of the respiratory adenovirus pathogen among children in Guangzhou, Southern China, a rapid, simple and practical method for identification and typing of respiratory adenoviruses was developed and evaluated. One pair of universal PCR primers was designed according to the conserved region of the hexon gene, which can detect not only HAdV-B3, -E4 and -B7, but also HAdV-B14, -F40 and -F41, with a specific 300bp PCR product. Three pairs of type-specific PCR primers were also designed according to the hypervariable regions of the hexon gene to type HAdV-B3, -E4 and -B7 by three independent PCR reactions, making it easy to optimize the PCR conditions. By using this method, one hundred throat swab specimens collected during Oct 2010 to Dec 2011 and suspected of being positive for adenoviral infection were identified and typed for adenoviruses. Of these samples, fifty-five were adenovirus-positive. The most common HAdV type was HAdV-B3, identified in 92.7% of samples, which is not only consistent with the data reported in 2004–2006, but also consistent with the recent report in Hangzhou, eastern China, indicating that HAdV-B3 has been circulating in Guangzhou, and maybe in eastern China, for many years. The method for the respiratory adenovirus identification and typing we developed is rapid, simple and practical, which has a potential in the real-time surveillance of circulating adenovirus strains and also to provide etiological evidence for the adenovirus-relative disease control and prevention in China.

Keywords: Adenovirus, Molecular epidemiology, Identification, Typing, Southern China

Footnotes

Foundation items: This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31100133); Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (S2012010009261); Guangdong College Students’ Innovative Experimental Project (1212111023); Extracurricular Research Activities of Southern Medical University (2010kw076) and School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine (GWXS20110102).

These authors contributed equally to this work.

References

  1. Allard A, Girones R, Juto P, Wadell G. Polymerase chain reaction for detection of adenoviruses in stool samples. Journal of Clinical Microbiology. 1990;28:2659–2667. doi: 10.1128/jcm.28.12.2659-2667.1990. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Biere B, Schweiger B. Human adenoviruses in respiratory infections: Sequencing of the hexon hypervariable region reveals high sequence variability. Journal of Clinical Virology. 2010;47:366–371. doi: 10.1016/j.jcv.2010.01.005. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Carballal G, Videla C M, Espinosa M A, Savy V, Uez O, Sequeira M D, Knez V, Requeijo P V, Posse C R, Miceli I. Multicentered study of viral acute lower respiratory infections in children from four cities of Argentina, 1993–1994. Journal of Medical Virology. 2001;64:167–174. doi: 10.1002/jmv.1032. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Carr M J, Kajon A E, Lu X, Dunford L, O’Reilly P, Holder P, De Gascun C F, Coughlan S, Connell J, Erdman D D, Hall W W. Deaths associated with human adenovirus-14p1 infections, Europe, 2009–2010. Emerging Infectious Diseases. 2011;17:1402–1408. doi: 10.3201/1708.101760. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Dehghan S, Liu E B, Seto J, Torres S F, Hudson N R, Kajon A E, Metzgar D, Dyer D W, Chodosh J, Jones M S, Seto D. Five genome sequences of subspecies B1 human adenoviruses associated with acute respiratory disease. Journal of Virology. 2012;86:635–636. doi: 10.1128/JVI.06593-11. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Deng J, Qian Y, Zhao L-Q, Zhu R-N, Wang F, Sun Y. Identification and typing for adenovirus by multiplex nest-PCR. Chinese Journal of Epidemiology. 2007;28:781–784. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Girouard G, Garceau R, Thibault L, Bourque C, Bastien N, Li Y. Province-wide adenovirus type 3 outbreak with severe cases in New Brunswick. Can J Infect Dis Med Microbiol. 2011;22:e4–6. doi: 10.1155/2011/575476. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Guo L, Gonzalez R, Zhou H, Wu C, Vernet G, Wang Z, Wang J. Detection of three human adenovirus species in adults with acute respiratory infection in China. European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases. 2012;31:1051–1058. doi: 10.1007/s10096-011-1406-8. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Hllleman M R, Werner J H. Recovery of New Agent from Patients with Acute Respiratory Illness. Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine. Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine (New York, N.Y.) 1954;85:183–188. doi: 10.3181/00379727-85-20825. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Jones M S, II, Harrach B, Ganac R D, Gozum M M A, dela Cruz W P, Riedel B, Pan C, Delwart E L, Schnurr D P. New Adenovirus Species Found in a Patient Presenting with Gastroenteritis. Journal of Virology. 2007;81:5978–5984. doi: 10.1128/JVI.02650-06. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Madisch I, Harste G, Pommer H, Heim A. Phylogenetic analysis of the main neutralization and hemagglutination determinants of all human adenovirus prototypes as a basis for molecular classification and taxonomy. Journal of Virology. 2005;79:15265–15276. doi: 10.1128/JVI.79.24.15265-15276.2005. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  12. Ou Z Y, Zeng Q Y, Wang F H, Xia H M, Lu J P, Xia J Q, Gong S T, Deng L, Zhang J T, Zhou R. Retrospective study of adenovirus in autopsied pulmonary tissue of pediatric fatal pneumonia in South China. BMC Infect Dis. 2008;8:122. doi: 10.1186/1471-2334-8-122. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  13. Rebelo-de-Andrade H, Pereira C, Giria M, Prudencio E, Brito M J, Cale E, Taveira N. Outbreak of acute respiratory infection among infants in Lisbon, Portugal, caused by human adenovirus serotype 3 and a new 7/3 recombinant strain. Journal of Clinical Microbiology. 2010;48:1391–1396. doi: 10.1128/JCM.02019-09. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  14. Rowe W P, Huebner R J, Gilmore L K, Parrott R H, Ward T G. Isolation of a Cytopathogenic Agent from Human Adenoids Undergoing Spontaneous Degeneration in Tissue Culture. Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine. Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine (New York, N.Y.) 1953;84:570–573. doi: 10.3181/00379727-84-20714. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  15. Su X, Tian X, Zhang Q, Li H, Li X, Sheng H, Wang Y, Wu H, Zhou R. Complete genome analysis of a novel E3-partial-deleted human adenovirus type 7 strain isolated in Southern China. Virology Journal. 2011;8:91. doi: 10.1186/1743-422X-8-91. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  16. Tang L-y, Xiong Y, Dian-xiang H, Liu X-y, Shi Z-y, Cui A, Xu W-b. A study on the epidemiology and pathology of four cities’ Adenovirus outbreaks of China in 2004. Disease Surveillance. 2006;21:285–287. [Google Scholar]
  17. Tang L, Wang L, Tan X, Xu W. Adenovirus serotype 7 associated with a severe lower respiratory tract disease outbreak in infants in Shaanxi Province, China. Virol J. 2011;8:23. doi: 10.1186/1743-422X-8-23. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  18. Xie L, Yu X F, Sun Z, Yang X H, Huang R J, Wang J, Yu A, Zheng L, Yu M C, Hu X W, Wang B M, Chen J, Pan J C, Liu S L. Journal of Clinical Microbiology. 2012. Two Adenovirus Serotype 3 Outbreaks Associated with Febrile Respiratory Disease and Pharyngoconjunctival Fever in Children Under 15 Years of Age in Hangzhou of China during 2011. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  19. Xu W, Erdman D D. Type-specific identification of human adenovirus 3, 7, and 21 by a multiplex PCR assay. Journal of Medical Virology. 2001;64:537–542. doi: 10.1002/jmv.1083. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  20. Zhang Q-W, Zhao S-H, Wang C-B, Zhu B, Zhu L, Zhao W, Li L, Wan C-S. Isolation and identification of human adenovirus type 3 GZ13 strain and the molecular evolution of hexon protein. Guangdong Medical Journal. 2012;33:1198–1201. [Google Scholar]
  21. Zhang Q, Seto D, Zhao S, Zhu L, Zhao W, Wan C. Genome Sequence of the First Human Adenovirus Type 14 Isolated in China. Journal of Virology. 2012;86:7019–7020. doi: 10.1128/JVI.00814-12. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  22. Zhang Q, Su X, Gong S, Zeng Q, Zhu B, Wu Z, Peng T, Zhang C, Zhou R. Comparative genomic analysis of two strains of human adenovirus type 3 isolated from children with acute respiratory infection in southern China. Journal of General Virology. 2006;87:1531–1541. doi: 10.1099/vir.0.81515-0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  23. Zhang Q W, You S Y, Sun J M, Wu Q, Yu C H, Zhang C Y. Quantitative fluorogenic real-time PCR assay for respiratory syncytial virus detection. Di Yi Jun Yi Da Xue Xue Bao. 2005;25:847–852. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Virologica Sinica are provided here courtesy of Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

RESOURCES