Epidemiological characteristics of human cytomegalovirus infection and glycoprotein H genotype in Chinese children.

Background: Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a common pathogen that causes many diseases in young children. HCMV glycoprotein H (gH) genotypes may be associated with the type and severity of some diseases. In this study, systematic surveillance was conducted on the prevalence of HCMV infections and HCMV gH genotypes in children.
Methods: Urine samples were collected from children admitted to the inpatient wards and outpatient departments between January 2015 and December 2016 in the Children's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine (Hangzhou, China), and these were tested by real-time PCR for HCMV DNA detection and HCMV gH genotyping.
Results: During the study period, a total of 32,542 urine samples were collected and analyzed using real-time PCR to confirm HCMV infection, and 5286 (16.2%) cases were positive for HCMV DNA. From our results, children aged less than one year were the most susceptible population to HCMV. Based on the data obtained from gH probes combined with real-time PCR assay, 964 HCMV-positive samples were genotyped for gH. Among them, 584 (60.6%) were positive for gH1 subtype, 307 (31.8%) for gH2 subtype, and 73 (7.6%) for both gH1 and gH2 subtypes. The gH2 rate of 42.9% indicated HCMV infection was the highest subtype in the group aged ≤28 days while gH1 rate of 77% was the highest in the group aged >3 years. The highest gH2 rate (36.4%) and lowest gH1 rate (50.0%) were detected in children with HCMV viremia, whereas the highest gH1 rates (65.0%) and lowest gH2 rates (28.8%) were found in children with HCMV hepatitis.
Conclusion: The findings of our study show that children less than 1-year-old are the major population among HCMV-infected children. gH1 is the predominant genotype of HCMV in China, which occurs more frequently than gH2 genotype in the case of HCMV hepatitis. However, the opposite tendency is observed in HCMV viremia, where the gH2 genotype is predominant.
(Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier B.V.)