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. 2025 Feb 2;170(2):45.
doi: 10.1007/s00705-025-06228-2.

Seroepidemiology (2018-2024) and epidemic spread of an emerging human parvovirus B19 genotype 1 (subtype 1a2) variant in Hungary, 2023/2024

Fruzsina Tóth  1 , Tímea Moser  1 , Ákos Boros  1 , Benigna Balázs  1 , Károly Takáts  1 , Péter Pankovics  1 , Gábor Reuter  2
Affiliations

Seroepidemiology (2018-2024) and epidemic spread of an emerging human parvovirus B19 genotype 1 (subtype 1a2) variant in Hungary, 2023/2024

Fruzsina Tóth et al. Arch Virol. .

Abstract

An unusually large number of human parvovirus B19 (B19V) infections were reported in European countries in 2023/2024, but the genetic background of this B19V epidemic strain is unknown. In this study, there was a larger number of confirmed B19V infections (five in 2021, eight in 2023, and 59 in 2024) and higher IgG seroprevalence (41.4% in 2022 and 54.3% in 2024) in Transdanubia, Hungary, in 2024 compared to 2018-2023. A B19V genotype 1a2 variant (prototype, 1338/HUN/2024, PQ155933) with common and unique nucleotide insertions in the untranslated regions of the genome and nonsynonymous and synonymous mutations in the coding region (NS1 and VP1) could be responsible to the ongoing B19V epidemic in Europe.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Ethical approval: The health data collection authorization number is KK/3937-1/2024 (University of Pécs).

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Yearly distribution of serum samples (N = 1441) tested for parvovirus B19 (B19V) IgG and IgM antibodies in South Transdanubia, Hungary, between 2018 and 2024. White and grey columns represent the total numbers of the tested and B19V IgG-positive specimens, respectively. The black column represents the percentage (%) of B19V IgG seropositivity per year. The red column represents the number of B19V IgM-positive samples (N = 72).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Percentage (%) of parvovirus B19 (B19V) IgG antibody positivity by age groups between 2018 and 2023 (N = 1078; cumulative data in grey) and in 2024 (N = 363; red). Each age group covers 5 years from 0 to 95 years. The sample size was less than 30 in the age groups between 81 and 95. Therefore, these data should be viewed with caution.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Phylogenetic analysis based on NS1 (A) and VP1 (B) nucleotide (nt) sequences of human parvovirus B19 (B19V) strains from this study (N = 10, indicated by bold letters), the most similar sequences identified by BLASTn search, and other representative genotypes/subtypes of B19V. The 1338/HUN/2024-like epidemic B19V strains are shown in a frame. Neighbor-joining trees were generated based on nucleotide sequence alignments of the complete NS1 (2016 nt) and VP1 (2346 nt) regions, using the Tamura-3+G model in MEGA ver. 11 with 1000 bootstrap replicates. Only bootstrap values higher than 50 are shown. The scale bars indicate the number of nucleotide substitutions per site. The designation of the sequences is as follows: accession number in square brackets, followed by country of origin and collection date. gt, genotype
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