Rotaviruses causing diarrhea in Vietnamese children characterized.

2003 MAY 7 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Researchers from England and Vietnam have characterized the rotaviruses causing diarrhea in Vietnamese children.

"Fecal samples from 123 children admitted to the Centre for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, with acute watery diarrhea were screened by negative-stain electron microscopy for viral enteropathogens. In addition to the 48 children who were found to be infected with rotavirus only, one had both rotavirus and astrovirus, two had adenovirus 40/41, and one had astrovirus only," scientists writing in the journal Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology report.

"The rotaviruses were subjected to molecular analysis by electropherotyping, G- and P-genotyping (by reverse-transcriptase PCR), and amplicon sequencing," said M. E. Landaeta and colleagues at the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford in England and the Centre for Tropical Diseases in Vietnam. "By use of newly designed PCR primers, all 49 isolates could be G-genotyped and all but one P-genotyped. Novel variants of G1-G1* were the most commonly detected G-genotype and such variants of P[8]-P[8*] were the second commonest P-genotype. The P[8*] and G1* amplicons were, respectively, only 92%-93.4% and 88.1%-89% similar to the corresponding ...