Fax +41 61 306 12 34 E-Mail karger@karger.ch www.karger.com Original Paper Intervirology 2009;52:17–21 DOI: 10.1159/000210834 Detection of Human Bocavirus from Fecal Samples of Hungarian Children with Acute Gastroenteritis Katalin N. Szomor a Beatrix Kapusinszky a Zita Rigó a Zoltán Kis a Mónika Rózsa a Ágnes Farkas a Andrásné Szilágyi b György Berencsi a Mária Takács a a Division of Virology, and b Division of Epidemiology, National Center for Epidemiology, Budapest, Hungary Introduction Human bocavirus (HBoV) was identified in 2005 by nonspecific genome amplification methods. Compre- hensive studies on sequence and phylogenetic analysis led to classification of the virus to the Parvoviridae family. Due to its close relation to bovine parvovirus and minute virus of canines, the novel parvovirus was named ‘hu- man bocavirus’ [1]. Two variants of the virus have been described [2] so far. However, differences in biological characteristics, disease association, epidemiology and geographical distributions of the genotypes are still poor- ly understood. HBoV infections show a seasonal distribu- tion, with the peak in temperate areas being in the winter months. Infections are associated with respiratory diseases and acute gastroenteritis, mostly among young children [3– 5]. The virus can be observed by electron microscope in nasopharingeal secretions of children infected with HBoV [6]. The DNA of the virus has been detected in the blood and nasopharingeal samples of patients with acute respiratory illness, in the fecal samples of patients with diarrhea [7] (with or without concomitant respiratory symptoms [8]), and – rarely – in urine samples [9] . In a Key Words Viral gastroenteritis  Human Bocavirus  Genotypes Abstract Objectives: Human bocavirus (HBoV), a newly identified member of the Parvoviridae family is associated with respira- tory tract and gastroenteric infections, mostly of young chil- dren. HBoV infections show a seasonal distribution with the peak in temperate areas being in the winter months. Meth- ods: In our study, 35 throat swabs from children under 5 years with acute respiratory symptoms and 61 stool samples from children ( !5 years) with acute gastroenteritis were col- lected in the period of October 2007–March 2008. A HBoV- specific polymerase chain reaction for detection of the virus, and sequence analysis for identification of virus variants were performed. Results: Although respiratory samples were all negative, 3.3% of stool samples (2/61) proved to be positive for HBoV. The virus carrier children were 3 and 5 years old. The ratio of HBoV positive samples is similar to in- ternational results (2.1–5.5%). Conclusions: According to the result of sequence analysis of HBoV, the occurrence of geno- type 2 of HBoV in Hungary is confirmed. Copyright © 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel Received: September 22, 2008 Accepted after revision: February 20, 2009 Published online: April 7, 2009 Dr. Mária Takács Division of Virology National Center for Epidemiology HU–1097 Budapest, Gyáli u. 2–6 (Hungary) Tel. +36 1 476 1392, Fax +36 1 476 1368, E-Mail takmar@gmail.com © 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel 0300–5526/09/0521–0017$26.00/0 Accessible online at: www.karger.com/int