Human rhinovirus (RV) is an important viral pathogen associated with severe acute respiratory tract infection. The present study retrospectively identified RV types in hospitalized patients with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) from October 2017 to June 2019 in Henan Province, China. Real-time PCR was used to screen pharyngeal swab samples for RV. Then, the VP1 gene sequences of RV-positive samples were amplified and sequenced with nested primer PCR; subsequently, analyses of the molecular epidemiology and genetic diversity characteristics of the RV types were performed. Seventy-three out of 1015 respiratory samples were identified as RV-positive, from which 65 complete VP1 sequences were successfully sequenced. These RVs were classified into 41 different types, including 26 RV-A types, 2 RV-B types, and 13 RV-C types. The RVs showed an obvious seasonal distribution, with peaks in summer and autumn. The epidemic peak of RV-C was later than that of RV-A. In addition, two new types of species, B and C, were proposed, Bpat107 and Cpat58, respectively. Compared with other types in the same RV species, the pairwise nucleotide p-distances of the two novel RV types were 0.262~0.402 and 0.251~0.508, respectively. This study analyzed the seasonal and genetic characteristics of RV associated with SARI cases in Henan Province, China. Two novel RV types were proposed.
Keywords: human rhinovirus; molecular epidemiology; novel type.
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