No gastroenteric Bocaviras in high risk patients stool samples

摘要

Human bocavirus (HBoV) was first described in 2005.The finding resulted from the intensive investigation of nasopharyngeal aspirates (NPAs) obtained from mostly pediatric patients suspected of acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs). Thus HBoV joined the ranks of viruses colloquially termed "respiratory viruses" because it appears to be predominantly detected in, and associated with, infection of the respiratory tract.The recent studies by Vicente et al. and Albuquerque et al. susascted the human bocavirus to be a putative causative agent of gastroenteritis in children. These researchers investigated the presence of HBoV-DNA in 527 stool samples from patients (<36 month of age) with gastroenteritis-unrelated respitatory symptoms. Of these stool samples, 48 (9.1%) were positive for HBoV-DNA.10 The frequency of HBoV-DNA positive fecal specimen investigated by Albuquerque and coworkers was 2% (14/705). In contrast, Lee et al. described a percentage of 0.8% HBoV-DNA positive specimen in their study, suggesting that at least in some populations HBoV may play only a minor role in gastroenteritis. However, a close tax-onomic relationship exists between HBoV and bovine-parvovirus, an animal virus capable of causing gastrointestinal symptoms in cattle.6 Taking this into account, and taking into account the nature of parvovirus particles, it appears likely that the virus can pass through and eventually infect the gastrointestinal tract, as patients frequently swallow virus-containing sputum or nasal secretions. Nevertheless, despite a final proof for the assumption by Brieu et al.4, is missing as neither a cell culture nor an animal model have been described, nucleic acid amplification methods remain the sole diagnostic tool for the detection of bocavirus. Instead of PCR, nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) may serve as an alternative detection method. In order to establish NASBA as an alternative to PCR amplification and to confirm PCR results, we made use of the basic open platform NucliSens EasyQ according to the manufacturer's recommendations.