Emerging Human Metapneumovirus Gene Duplication Variants in Patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Infection, China, 2017–2019
Zhibo Xie, Jin Xu, Yunhui Ren, Ai‐Li Cui, Huiling Wang, Jinhua Song, Qiang Zhang, Manli Hu, Wenbo Xu, Yan Zhang
Abstract
H uman metapneumovirus (HMPV; family Pneu- moviridae, genus Metapneumovirus) is a major cause of acute respiratory tract infections, especially in children and elderly persons (1,2). Its genome is 13.2 kb, containing 8 genes encoding 9 proteins. The G gene, around 654-867 nt acids sequence length, is the most variable nucleotide sequence in the whole genome of HMPV and has been widely used to study HMPV genetic variation (3-5). HMPV has 1 serotype with 2 subgroups A and B, further divided into 5 genotypes, including A1, A2a, A2b, B1, and B2, based mainly on variations in the G gene (4,6,7). Recently, unique HMPV variants possessing a 180 nt duplication (nt-dup) in the G gene, first reported in Spain, and a 111 nt-dup in the G gene, first reported Japan (5,8,9), followed by Croatia and Guangdong, China (10, These variants were clustered in the A2c lineage of the phylogenetic tree In this study, we investigated the prevalence of HMPV associated with patients with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) and identified genetic variations in the G gene of HMPV in Luohe, in Henan Province, China, during 2017-2019.