Epidemiology of Human Adenovirus-Associated Acute Respiratory Infections in Children

Abstract

Background: Human adenovirus (HAdV) is highly prevalent in children and associated with various diseases. Monitoring of the spread of HAdV species is crucial in many aspects (e.g. genomic surveillance). Methods: A total of 596 throat swabs were collected from pediatric patients diagnosed with acute respiratory tract infection in the outpatient department from July 2021 to January 2022. HAdV was detected using a real-time PCR method. HAdV hexon genes were amplified by PCR, sequenced, then analyzed, and compared with the public hexon genes of HAdV using a basic local alignment search tool (BLAST). Multiple sequence alignments were performed using ClustalW (DNASTAR 7). Phylogenetic analyses were conducted using the IQ-TREE. Statistical analysis was performed in the IBM SPSS Statistics. Results: 52 (51.5%) males and 49 (48.5%) females tested positive for HAdV. The difference between the sexes was not significant. 82 HAdV-positive cases (81.2%) were below the age of six. The detection rate was not significant among various age groups. 80 patients (80.8%) were diagnosed with upper respiratory tract infection, 15 patients (15.2%) with bronchitis, 3 patients (3.0%) with gastroenteritis, and 1 patient (1.0%) with pneumonia. There was no statistically significant difference among different diagnoses.