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. 2007 Jan;38(1):27-31.
doi: 10.1016/j.jcv.2006.10.009. Epub 2006 Nov 29.

Human Coronavirus-NL63 infections in Korean children, 2004-2006

Tae Hee Han  1 , Ju-Young Chung, Sang Woo Kim, Eung-Soo Hwang
Affiliations

Human Coronavirus-NL63 infections in Korean children, 2004-2006

Tae Hee Han et al. J Clin Virol. 2007 Jan.

Abstract

Background: Human coronavirus-NL63 (HCoV-NL63) has been isolated from children with respiratory tract infections and its prevalence in Korea has not been reported.

Objectives: This study was designed to investigate the presence and the clinical features of HCoV-NL63 during two winter seasons.

Study design: During April 2004-April 2006, nasopharyngeal specimens from children hospitalized with acute respiratory disease were tested for common respiratory viruses, including RSV, influenza A, influenza B, parainfluenza viruses, and adenovirus by IFA. hMPV infection was excluded by nested RT-PCR using primers for F-gene. To detect HCoV-NL63, previously described nested PCR assays for 1a and 1b were used. PCR products of the 1a gene for HCoV-NL63 were sequenced.

Results: Out of 872 nasopharyngeal aspirate from children aged under 16 years, 14 (1.7%) were positive for HCoV-NL63. Most of the patients had croup (64.2%) or bronchiolitis (21.4%). The peak prevalence was found in November (28.5%). Most were collected between November 2004 and February 2005.

Conclusions: HCoV-NL63 may be one of the causative agents of acute respiratory tract infection, especially croup.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Seasonal distribution of HCoV-NL63 positive samples. The number in parenthesis after each month gives the number of the samples tested.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Phylogenetic analysis of Korean (KR), Canadian (CAN), and Queensland (Q) 1a gene sequences from human coronavirus NL63 strains presented on a topology tree prepared in MEGA3. Nucleotide alignment of a 425 bp portion of the 1a gene was prepared using BioEdit V7.0. The nulcleotide distance matrix was generated using the Kimura two-parameter estimation. Nodal confidence values indicate the results of bootstrap resampling (n = 1000). Two main sequence clusters are apparent and all Korean strains belong to the upper cluster. GenBank accession numbers: KR (DQ093116-DQ093123, DQ351988, DQ453793-DQ453795, DQ534705-DQ534706), CAN (AY675543, AY675550, AY675542, AY675547), Q (AY746455, AY746458, AY746451), NL63 (NC_005831), and NL (AY518894).
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