Molecular detection and characterization of Aichi viruses in sewage-polluted waters of Venezuela

Abstract

The circulation of Aichi virus in a major urban area was demonstrated using molecular detection with samples recovered from a major river polluted with sewage discharges in Caracas, Venezuela. Five out of 11 water samples studied were positive, being classified by phylogenetic analysis as genotype B. Analysis of sewage waters appears to be a useful methodology to uncover the presence of a hitherto undetected fecal pathogen in a given geographical area.

FIG. 1.

Phylogenetic analysis of the Aichi viruses recovered from urban sewage, based on a 391-bp fragment of the genomic 3CD region junction, corresponding to positions 6322 to 6713 of the genomic sequence of the reference strain AB010145. The tree was constructed using the minimum evolution method as implemented in the package MEGA 4. The bar is in units of base substitutions per site. Bootstrap values (>75) are indicated for the corresponding nodes, based on a resampling analysis of 1,000 replicates. Venezuelan isolates are indicated in boldface type.