Phylogenetic Analysis of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Isolated from Children with Respiratory Tract Infections in Baghdad City, Iraq

Abstract

Abstract Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of hospitalization in infants worldwide, genotypes responsible of disease severity and host immune responses. This study aims to determine the infection rate of respiratory syncytial virus in children with respiratory tract infection and identify the genotyping among the study population. Cross sectional study which enrolled 150 infants with acute respiratory tract infection, males 81(54%) and females 69(46%) aged under five years old, who was admitted to Al-Imamin Al-Kadhimin Medical City and Pediatrics Protection Hospital in Baghdad during the period from December 2017 till April 2018. Nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from each participant and stored as frozen at -70 °C until to use for RNA extraction and convention polymerase chain reaction to detect of respiratory syncytial virus in the study population. According to result of this study out of all these samples, 26 samples were positive for RSV(17.33%). The infection rate of RSV is more common in males 17(65.39%), than females 9(34.61%) and in children ≤ one year (46.15%) also high frequency were noticed among patients live in an urban area (73.08%) and winter 20 (76.92%) than spring 6 (23.08%). According to different clinical feature, fever, cough, and wheezing were more common than other sign. The sequence conducted for all RSV- positive isolates, 11 respiratory syncytial virus positive isolates was in genotype B and 1 in genotype A. The sequence of RSV B the local isolates were closed to Argentina isolation and Tailwind isolate while in genotype A isolates were closed to isolates from different regions (Saudi Arabia, German, India isolation). The conclusion of this study revealed that respiratory syncytial virus B infections were more frequent than RSV A among children with acute respiratory tract infection.