title: Astrovirus MLB1 is not associated with diarrhea in a cohort of Indian children.
abstract: Astroviruses are a known cause of human diarrhea. Recently the highly divergent astrovirus MLB1 (MLB1) was identified in a stool sample from a patient with diarrhea. It has subsequently been detected in stool from individuals with and without diarrhea. To determine whether MLB1 is associated with diarrhea, we conducted a case control study of MLB1. In parallel, the prevalence of the classic human astroviruses (HAstVs) was also determined in the same case control cohort. 400 cases and 400 paired controls from a longitudinal birth cohort in Vellore, India were analyzed by RT-PCR. While HAstVs were associated with diarrhea (p = 0.029) in this cohort, MLB1 was not; 14 of the controls and 4 cases were positive for MLB1. Furthermore, MLB1 viral load did not differ significantly between the cases and controls. The role of MLB1 in human health still remains unknown and future studies are needed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Lori R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Holtz
authors.forename: Irma K
authors.initials: IK
authors.lastname: Bauer
authors.forename: Priya
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rajendran
authors.forename: Gagandeep
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D019350:Astroviridae Infections / Q000235:genetics / Q000821:virology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003967:Diarrhea / Q000235:genetics / Q000821:virology*; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D001257:Mamastrovirus / Q000502:physiology*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction