Molecular epidemiology of adenovirus infection among infants with diarrhea in Chaoyang district, Beijing from 2011 to 2017

Objective To investigate the genetic characteristics of human adenovirus (AdV) among infants with diarrhea in Chaoyang district, Beijing from 2011 to 2017. Methods Adenovirus positive stool samples were collected from 2011 to 2017 in Chaoyang District of Beijing. The hexon region genes of human adenovirus were sequenced. Multi-sequence alignments were performed and phylogenetic tree was constructed by Mega software. Results A total of 64 samples were sequenced and analyzed. The ratio of male to female was 11∶5. The mean age was 1.56 years. Among them, AdV41 accounted for 70.31%, followed by AdV31 (26.25%), AdV40 (4.69%), AdV1 (3.13%), AdV5 (3.13%), AdV6 (3.13%), AdV7 (3.13%), AdV2 (1.56%), AdV3 (1.56%), AdV4 (1.56%) and AdV61 (1.56%). Conclusions Human adenovirus may play an important role in viral diarrhea in Chaoyang district from 2011 to 2017. The current adenovirus epidemic is complex and AdV41 was the dominant strain in this region. Key words: Adenovirus; Diarrhea; Phylogenetic analysis