Incidence of hepatitis A virus among hospitalized children's in Cairo

ABSTRACT

Hepatitis A virus [HAV] is an important cause of acute hepatitis worldwide that can lead to severe illness or even death. It is transmitted by the fecal-oral route through the consumption of contaminated food or water. This study was carried out to determine the incidence of HAV infection among hospitalized children's with acute hepatitis and genotyping of HAV Strains circulating in Greater Cairo. To fulfill the aim of the work, stool samples were collected from 102 hospitalized Children's, ages ranged from 0.5 to 12 years during the period from Dec. 2007 to Nov. 2008. Collected stool samples were submitted to nested RT-PCR for amplification of the VP1/2A region of the HAV genome. The expected fragment sizes of PCR products were 391bp and 244 bp for the first and second round of PCR, respectively. PCR products, of 2nd round of some positive samples, were purified for nucleotide sequence analysis in both directions. Fragments nucleotide sequences were compared to sequences derived from the corresponding HAV genome regions in the Gen Bank. Obtained data showed that HAV RNA prevalence were 82.35% [84/102] among hospitalized children's with acute hepatitis, and the highest HAV RNA was in the age group 3-5 and 9-12, where it reached 88.88% [40/45] and 81.8% [18/22] respectively, and the lowest prevalence rate was 70% [7/10] in the age group 0.5-2. Also, the incidence of HAV RNAwas higher in females 88.1%[37/42], than in males 78.33% [47/60]. Seasonal variation of HAV revealed that the viral incidence was 100% during winter and spring seasons, [25/25] and [17/17], respectively. While it was 85.36% [35/41] and 36.84% [7/19] in summer and autumn, respectively. Sequence analysis of selected fragments showed that all fragments are the same isolate. The phylogenic tree of positive samples confirmed that the isolated virus sequencing was most closely related to Hepatitis A virus isolate Egypt-swS5 deposited in the Gen Bank by accession no. [FJ0100837.2], with 100% of nucleotide identity