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. 2018 Sep 21;10(10):515.
doi: 10.3390/v10100515.

Human Coronavirus Infections in Israel: Epidemiology, Clinical Symptoms and Summer Seasonality of HCoV-HKU1

Nehemya Friedman  1   2 , Hadar Alter  3 , Musa Hindiyeh  4   5 , Ella Mendelson  6   7 , Yonat Shemer Avni  8 , Michal Mandelboim  9   10
Affiliations

Human Coronavirus Infections in Israel: Epidemiology, Clinical Symptoms and Summer Seasonality of HCoV-HKU1

Nehemya Friedman et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

Human coronaviruses (HCoVs) cause mild to severe respiratory diseases. Six types of HCoVs have been discovered, the most recent one termed the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). The aim of this study is to monitor the circulation of HCoV types in the population during 2015⁻2016 in Israel. HCoVs were detected by real-time PCR analysis in 1910 respiratory samples, collected from influenza-like illness (ILI) patients during the winter sentinel influenza survey across Israel. Moreover, 195 HCoV-positive samples from hospitalized patients were detected during one year at Soroka University Medical Center. While no MERS-CoV infections were detected, 10.36% of patients in the survey were infected with HCoV-OC43 (43.43%), HCoV-NL63 (44.95%), and HCoV-229E (11.62%) viruses. The HCoVs were shown to co-circulate with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and to appear prior to influenza virus infections. HCoV clinical symptoms were more severe than those of RSV infections but milder than influenza symptoms. Hospitalized patients had similar HCoV types percentages. However, while it was absent from the public winter survey, 22.6% of the patients were HCoV-HKU1 positives, mainly during the spring-summer period.

Keywords: HCoV-229E; HCoV-HKU1; HCoV-NL63; HCoV-OC43; Israel; human coronavirus.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. This work was performed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Ph.D. degree of Nehemya Friedman, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Respiratory viruses in the population during winter season 2015–2016. (A) Percentages of Human coronaviruses (HCoV) types. Pie chart presenting percentages of HCoV types among the 1910 influenza-like illness (ILI) samples collected in the 2015–2016 winter season; (B) Proportions of single and double-positive HCoV-positive samples. All samples were separated into three groups—HCoV, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Each group was then separated to HCoV positive/negative. The bars represent the percentage of sample containing only HCoV (single positive) or co-infection with RSV or influenza. The chi-square statistic is 35.9447 and the p-value is < 0.00001; (C,D) Distribution of respiratory virus infection in the 2015–2016 winter season, starting from the 40th week of 2015 until the 15th week of 2016. (C) Distribution of HCoV, RSV and influenza viruses; (D) Distribution of HCoV types.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Age distribution of the HCoV-infected patients. The percent of all HCoV-positive cases (Line, Right Y-axis) and of each HCoV type (Bars, Left Y-axis) per patient age groups.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Clinical characteristics of patients infected with HCoV, RSV or influenza. A summary of the clinical symptoms of Israeli patients infected in the 2015–2016 winter season with HCoV, RSV or influenza. Confidence interval was calculated for the frequency of each symptom. */**/*** indicates p-value < 0.05/0.01/0.001 respectively, calculated in nonparametric Z-test for frequencies in IBM® SPSS® Statistics software (Version 23).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Year distribution of HCoV types in hospitalized patients. Months distribution of 195 hospitalized HCoV-positive cases from July 2015 until June 2016. Each HCoV type is presented as number of positive cases each month.
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