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Review
. 2017 Feb 18;9(2):33.
doi: 10.3390/v9020033.

Epidemiology of Classic and Novel Human Astrovirus: Gastroenteritis and Beyond

Diem-Lan Vu  1   2 , Albert Bosch  3   4 , Rosa M Pintó  5   6 , Susana Guix  7   8
Affiliations
Review

Epidemiology of Classic and Novel Human Astrovirus: Gastroenteritis and Beyond

Diem-Lan Vu et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

Since they were identified in 1975, human astroviruses have been considered one of the most important agents of viral acute gastroenteritis in children. However, highly divergent astroviruses infecting humans have been recently discovered and associated with extra-intestinal infections. The report of cases of fatal meningitis and encephalitis, especially in immunocompromised individuals, has broadened their disease spectrum. Although zoonotic transmission among animal and human astroviruses has not been clearly recognized, the genetic similarity between some human and animal viruses makes it likely to occur. This review provides an update on the epidemiology of both classic and novel human astroviruses, and a comprehensive view on confirmed or potential association between astrovirus and human disease.

Keywords: astrovirus; encephalitis; epidemiology; gastroenteritis; meningitis; zoonosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Phylogenetic tree of representative members of the Astroviridae family. The tree was constructed based on complete capsid amino acid sequences, using the Neighbor Joining method implemented in the MEGA6 program [27]. The tree is drawn to scale, with branch lengths in the same units as those of the evolutionary distances (p-distance) used to infer the phylogenetic tree. All positions containing alignment gaps and missing data were removed only in pairwise sequence comparisons (pairwise deletion option). Viruses infecting birds are shown in brown, while viruses infecting humans are shown in red.
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