Identification of Viral Signatures Using High-Throughput Sequencing on Blood of Patients With Kawasaki Disease

Arnaud G L'Huillier; Francisco Brito; Noemie Wagner; Samuel Cordey; Evgeny Zdobnov; Klara M Posfay-Barbe; Laurent Kaiser

doi:10.3389/fped.2019.00524

Identification of Viral Signatures Using High-Throughput Sequencing on Blood of Patients With Kawasaki Disease

Front Pediatr. 2019 Dec 19:7:524. doi: 10.3389/fped.2019.00524. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Arnaud G L'Huillier^{1

2}, Francisco Brito³, Noemie Wagner¹, Samuel Cordey², Evgeny Zdobnov³, Klara M Posfay-Barbe¹, Laurent Kaiser²

Affiliations

¹ Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Department of Pediatrics, University Hospitals of Geneva & Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
² Laboratory of Virology, Division of Infectious Diseases and Division of Laboratory Medicine, University Hospitals of Geneva & Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
³ Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Geneva, Switzerland.

Abstract

Aims: Kawasaki disease is an acute pediatric vasculitis whose etiology remains unknown but epidemiology and clinical presentation suggest a viral etiology. We performed unbiased high-throughput-sequencing on blood of patients with Kawasaki Disease (KD). Materials and Methods: High-throughput-sequencing was performed directly on blood of children with typical KD. Sequences were aligned against a database of clinically relevant viruses. Results: Four patients were acutely infected in the blood, with respectively, poliovirus (vaccine strain), measles (vaccine strain), rhinovirus and bocavirus. Patients with poliovirus and measles had received oral polio and measles vaccines, respectively, twelve and 2 weeks prior. Conclusion: Viral signatures were identified in more than half of the patients, including some corresponding to their vaccinal history. This could suggest a temporal association with KD.

Keywords: Kawasaki disease; etiology; high-throughput sequencing; viral infection; virus.