Prevalence and genetic diversity analysis of human coronavirus OC43 among adult patients with acute respiratory infections in Beijing, 2012

PLoS One. 2014 Jul 2;9(7):e100781. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0100781. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

To determine the prevalence, epidemiology and genetic diversity of human coronavirus OC43 (HCoV-OC43) among adult patients with acute respiratory infections (ARI) in Beijing,five hundred and fifty-nine nasopharyngeal swab samples were collected from adult patients with ARI in Beijing. The prevalence of HCoV-OC43 infection among these patients was assessed using two different OneStep reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays. The epidemiological profiles of the patients with HCoV-OC43 infection were described. Partial S and N genes of HCoV-OC43 circulating strains were sequenced followed by phylogenetic analysis and amino acid alignment. Our results showed that the prevalence of HCoV-OC43 infection was 12.52% (95% CI: 9.78-15.26%), and the epidemic peak occurred in autumn. Fifty partial S and 40 partial N fragments were obtained from these patients. Phylogenetic analysis based on neighbour-joining method showed that at least three distinct clusters (A, B, C/D) of HCoV-OC43 strains were circulating among adult patients with ARI in Beijing. In addition, some novel unique clusters (UNT) of HCoV-OC43 were found in the S- and N-based phylogenetic trees. Furthermore, consensus amino acids substitutes for each cluster were also found after alignment of partial S or N sequence coding region in this study. In conclusion, we herein describe the prevalence of HCoV-OC43 among adult patients and provide substantial evidence for the genetic diversity of HCoV-OC43 circulating in Beijing.

Publication types

  • Clinical Trial
  • Multicenter Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acute Disease
  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • China / epidemiology
  • Coronavirus Infections* / epidemiology
  • Coronavirus Infections* / genetics
  • Coronavirus OC43, Human / genetics*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Phylogeny*
  • Polymorphism, Genetic*
  • Prevalence
  • Respiratory Tract Infections* / epidemiology
  • Respiratory Tract Infections* / genetics

Grants and funding

This work was supported by grants from the State Megaproject for Infectious Disease Research of China (2011ZX10004-001, 2013ZX10004601) and National Science Funds of China (81100062). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.