WU polyomavirus in children, Canada

Abstract

WU polyomavirus was detected in nasopharyngeal aspirates in 2 (2.5%) of 79 children with respiratory infections (both infected with respiratory syncytial virus) and in 5 (6.4%) of 78 asymptomatic children during the same winter season in Canada. The strains were closely related to Australian and American viruses based on analysis of large T antigen (TAg) and VP2 genes. The pathogenic role of WU virus is still uncertain.

Figure

Phylogenetic analysis of Canadian WU polyomavirus strains CanWUT9–2003, CanWUT38–2003, CanWUC40–2003 and CanWUT52–2003 (shown in boldface), based on nucleotide sequences of the VP2 region. Multiple nucleotide sequence alignments were performed by using the ClustalW program and a phylogenetic tree was constructed with the MEGA 3.1 software using the neighbor-joining algorithm with Kimura-2 parameters (9). The analysis included WU strains previously identified from Australian and American cohorts (7) i.e., B9, S6, B28, B37, B22, B24, B35, B10, B1, B17, B0, B12, B20, B14, B34, B21, B3, and B2 (GenBank accession nos.: EF444592, EF444593, EF444590, EF444589, EF444588, EF444587, EF444586, EF444584, EF444583, EF444582, EF-444555, EF444557, EF444561, EF444562, EF444572, EF444585, EF444567, and EF444591, respectively).