Early reinfection with human metapneumovirus in an infant

Abstract

Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) is one of the major pathogens of respiratory illness. Reinfection with hMPV occurs frequently throughout life. We describe an infant who was infected with two different hMPV strains during a period of only 1 month.

FIG. 1.

Phylogenetic analysis of hMPV fusion nucleotide sequences. A tree was constructed by the neighbor-joining method with 100 bootstraps and random sequence addition. The length of each horizontal line represents the number of substitutions per site. Bootstrap values over 70% are shown. APV C (avian pneumovirus subgroup C; GenBank accession number AF187152) was the outgroup and was used to root the tree. The hMPV sequence analysis included the following (GenBank accession number): 94-1 (AF371342), 99-1 (AF371344), 00-1 (AF371337), and 93-1 (AF371341), isolated in The Netherlands (18); CAN00-14 (AY145299), CAN97-83 (AY297749), CAN98-75 (AY297748), and CAN-97-82 (AY145295), isolated in Canada (1); and JPS03-180 (AY530092), JPS03-240 (AY530095), JPS02-76 (AY530089), JPS04-399 (AY653168), and JPS04-411 (AY653175), isolated in Sapporo, Japan (8, 13).

FIG. 2.

Time lines of clinical and virological findings. Filled bars indicate the periods of hospitalization. The hatched bar indicates the estimated period when the patient was re-exposed to hMPV.