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Case Reports
. 2022 May 1;41(5):630-631.
doi: 10.1097/ICO.0000000000002853.

Acute Keratoconjunctivitis Resulting From Coinfection With Avian Newcastle Virus and Human Adenovirus

N Venkatesh Prajna  1 , Prajna Lalitha  1 , Cindi Chen  2 , Lina Zhong  2 , Thomas M Lietman  2 , Thuy Doan  2 , Gerami D Seitzman  2
Affiliations
Case Reports

Acute Keratoconjunctivitis Resulting From Coinfection With Avian Newcastle Virus and Human Adenovirus

N Venkatesh Prajna et al. Cornea. .

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this study was to report a case of human keratoconjunctivitis caused by both Newcastle disease virus (NDV) and human adenovirus.

Methods: A 32-year-old-man presented with an acute unilateral keratoconjunctivitis that resolved with corneal scarring. On presentation, his conjunctival swab was collected for metagenomic sequencing.

Results: The highest number of pathogen sequencing reads in the conjunctival sample mapped to the NDV. The second highest number of reads mapped to human adenovirus. Confirmation testing with directed reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction also identified NDV in the specimen.

Conclusions: Newcastle conjunctivitis has not been reported for more than 40 years. Mixed infections, including zoonotic pathogens, may be more common than realized.

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Conflict of interest statement

The remaining authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Figures

Figure 1:
Figure 1:
Metagenomic RNA deep sequencing of the patient’s conjunctival sample. (A). The y-axis indicates the normalized abundance of unique sequencing reads (rM = reads per million reads). In this sample the Avian avulavirus 1 Newcastle virus (NDV) represents the most abundant sequence in this sample. The human adenovirus D RNA sequences represented the second most abundant unique sequencing read in the sample (B) Genome coverage of avian avulavirus 1 as identified with metagenomic RNA deep sequencing. The x-axis represents the position along the avian avulavirus 1 genome in base pairs. Beneath the x-axis, in green, are the positions of each gene in the genome as obtained from the NCBI reference sequence entry NC_039223.1. The y-axis represents the absolute number of reads that map to the indicated position in the genome.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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