Characteristics of clinical bacteria and H3N2 influenza virus co-infection and variations in viral hemagglutinin cleavage site / 中华微生物学和免疫学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the characteristics of clinical bacteria and H3N2 influenza A virus coinfection and variations in the hemagglutinin (HA) cleavage site of H3N2 among influenza-like cases.Methods:A total of 12 250 samples were collected from influenza-like cases for real-time PCR detection of H3N2 influenza virus from January 2013 to December 2018. To analyze the characteristics of co-infection, some H3N2-positive samples were selected and analyzed by real-time PCR to detect Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae and haemophilus influenzae type B. HA genes of H3N2 isolates were amplified by RT-PCR and sequenced. A phylogenetic tree was constructed based on HA gene sequences. Amino acid variations in cleavage sites were analyzed. Results:H3N2 influenza viruses had been detected every year since 2013, causing 44.69% influenza-positive cases. There were 295 randomly selected H3N2-positive samples, of which 29.2% had clinical bacterial infection. The HA cleavage sites of 210 H3N2 isolates were sequenced and 68 had variations, including 63 carrying K342R (PEKQTR to PERQTR) single-amino acid site variation. The co-infection rate was 31.25% (45/144) in unmutated samples and 23.53% (16/68) in mutated samples (χ 2=1.34, P>0.05). The H3N2 influenza viruses circulating in Hangzhou mainly belonged to two evolutionary clusters of 3c.3a and 3c.2a, and the viruses with K342R mutation at the cleavage site belonged to the evolutionary cluster of 3c.3a. Conclusions:H3N2 influenza virus played an important role in the epidemic of influenza virus in Hangzhou. There were some bacterial co-infections in influenza-positive cases. Cleavage site variations showed regional epidemic characteristics, but had no significant correlation with bacterial co-infection.