Identification of new subtype of astrovirus type 3 from an infant with diarrhea in Wuhan, China.

Human astrovirus is one of the important causes for viral gastroenteritis in young children. In previous study where we examined the molecular epidemiology of human astrovirus (HAstV) infection in infants in Wuhan City, we isolated and identified a new subtype (WH1859) of HAstV genotype 3 from an infant with diarrhea. The sequence analysis of this strain showed that the complete region of ORF2 of WH1859 contains 2385-bp of nucleotides that encode 795 amino acids. Because WH1859 strain has the identity of less than 95% with the distance of more than 0.05 to the reference strains of HAstV-3, WH1859 represents a distinct subtype within HAstV-3 strains. Further studies are needed to determine the role of this new subtype strain of HAstV in viral gastroenteritis among young children.