The highest prevalence of human metapneumovirus in Ahwaz children accompanied by acute respiratory infections.
OBJECTIVE
The newly described human metapneumovirus (hMPV) has been recently discovered as an etiological agent of acute respiratory infections (ARTI) in infants and children. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of hMPV and its potential role as causative agent of ARTI in Ahwaz children.


METHODS
In the present study, we examined 124 nasal swabs from infants affected by ARTI for the presence of hMPV by RT-PCR technique.


RESULTS
Sixty-eight out of 124 (54.4%) cases were positive for hMPV which is the highest incidence of hMPV ever reported in the world, 94.1% of positive cases belonged to genotype A; whereas no B genotype was detected. Our positive hMPV children were affected by upper (URTI) as well as lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI); however, LARTIs had higher prevalence.


CONCLUSIONS
We suggest a probable role of F protein alteration as the causative agent for the highest prevalence of hMPV infection among Ahvaz children.
Arabpour
M
M
Division of Virology, Ahwaz Jondishapur University of Medical Sciences, Ahvaz, Iran. arabpour@sums.ac.ir
Samarbafzadeh
A R
AR
Makvandi
M
M
Shamsizadeh
A
A
Percivalle
E
E
Englud
Janet
J
Latifi
Seid Mannut
SM
D012634:Bodily Secretions / Q000821:virology; D005260:Female; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007492:Iran / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D029121:Metapneumovirus / Q000145:classification / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D009666:Nose / Q000821:virology; D018184:Paramyxoviridae Infections / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000821:virology*; D015995:Prevalence; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000235:genetics; D012141:Respiratory Tract Infections / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000821:virology*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods
D012367:RNA, Viral