Bovine group A rotavirus (bovine RVA) is recognized as a major cause of severe gastroenteritis in newborn calves. The purpose of this study was to estimate the prevalence and identify the genotypes of circulating bovine RVA in newborn diarrheic calves. Two hundred fifty-three stool samples of diarrheic calves up to 1 month old were collected from 42 industrial dairy farms in two Iranian provinces during March 2010 to February 2012. All collected samples were screened for the presence of bovine RVA by RT-PCR, and the G and P genotypes were determined by semi-nested multiplex RT-PCR assay. The results of RT-PCR indicated that 49.4 % (125 out of 253) of the samples were positive for bovine RVA. The G and P genotyping of a subset of positive samples (n = 85) by semi-nested multiplex RT-PCR revealed that G6 (55.3 %) and G10 (43.5 %) and P[5] (51.8 %) and P[11] (27 %) were the most prevalent G and P genotypes, respectively. G6P[5] was the dominant genotype (35.3 %), followed by G10P[5], G10P[11] and G6P[11], with prevalence rates of 16.5 %, 15.3 % and 10.6 %, respectively. Sequence analysis of 20 VP7 and four VP4 genes showed highest nucleotide sequence identity with the corresponding genes of strains RVA/Cow-tc/GBR/UK/1973/G6P7[5] and RVA/Cow-tc/USA/B223/XXXX/G10P[11]. The results of this study reveal the diversity of G and P genotypes in bovine RVA samples from diarrheic Iranian calves and expands our knowledge of bovine RVA infections in the Middle East. These results also highlight the importance of producing of an effective rotavirus vaccine and its inclusion in the national cattle immunization program.

Group A rotavirus (RVA) is the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis in young children worldwide. A prospective surveillance network has been set up to investigate the virological and clinical features of RVA infections and to detect the emergence of potentially epidemic strains in France. From 2009 to 2014, RVA-positive stool samples were collected from 4800 children <5 years old attending the paediatric emergency units of 16 large hospitals. Rotaviruses were then genotyped by RT-PCR with regard to their outer capsid proteins VP4 and VP7. Genotyping of 4708 RVA showed that G1P[8] strains (62.2%) were predominant. The incidence of G9P[8] (11.5%), G3P[8] (10.4%) and G2P[4] (6.6%) strains varied considerably, whereas G4P[8] (2.7%) strains were circulating mostly locally. Of note, G12P[8] (1.6%) strains emerged during the seasons 2011-12 and 2012-13 with 4.1% and 3.0% prevalence, respectively. Overall, 40 possible zoonotic reassortants, such as G6 (33.3%) and G8 (15.4%) strains, were detected, and were mostly associated with P[6] (67.5%). Analysis of clinical records of 624 hospitalized children and severity scores from 282 of them showed no difference in clinical manifestations or severity in relation to the genotype. The relative stability of RVA genotypes currently co-circulating and the large predominance of P[8] type strains may ensure vaccine effectiveness in France. The surveillance will continue to monitor the emergence of new reassortants that might not respond to current vaccines, all the more so as all genotypes can cause severe infections in infants.

We report for the first time Rotarix vaccine-acquired rotavirus infections with viremia in 2 infants vaccinated before being diagnosed with severe combined immune deficiency. Monitoring the first infant revealed that persistent rotavirus infection resolved after complete immune reconstitution was achieved by gene therapy.

In this study, bovine enteric caliciviruses (BECs) were detected in 49.4% of a total of 253 stool specimens for diarrheic calves collected from 42 industrial dairy farms from March 2010 to February 2012. Genogroup III norovirus (NoVsGIII) were more prevalent (39.5%) than neboviruses (NBs) (15%), and coinfections were observed in 5.1% of the samples tested. Sequence analysis of the partial polymerase gene from 13 NoVsGIII samples indicated the circulation of both genotype 1 and genotype 2 strains. Among the six NB strains sequenced, five were related to the Bo/Nebraska/80/US strain, while one was related to the Bo/Newbury1/76/UK strain.

Seven commercial immunochromatographic assays intended for the detection of group A rotavirus antigens in human stool samples were evaluated. These assays showed similar levels of diagnostic accuracy and were suitable for the detection of rotavirus in patients with acute gastroenteritis but missed some asymptomatic rotavirus shedding identified by real-time reverse transcription-PCR. Group A rotaviruses (RVA) are a leading cause of severe gastroenteritis in young children worldwide, with an estimated 450,000 deaths of children under 5 years of age per year (1). Immunochromatographic (ICT) assays are widely used to detect RVA antigens in stool samples. A recent Australian study (2) demonstrated unexpectedly low specificity of the Vikia Rota-Adeno ICT assay (bioMérieux, Marcy l'Etoile, France), while excellent specificity was reported for this assay in previous studies (3,4). This observation underlines the importance of regular assessments of the diagnostic performance of ICT assays in order to accurately diagnose RVA infections. In this study, we compared the diagnostic accuracies of seven commercially available ICT assays intended for the detection of RVA antigens in human stool samples, including the Vikia Rota-Adeno ICT assay.The diagnostic accuracy of ICT assays was first assessed on a collection of surplus material from raw fecal samples collected for RVA screening by three French hospital laboratories (CharlevilleMézières, Dijon, and Saint-Etienne) during the RVA epidemic peak from February through May 2014. Whatever the rotavirus screening result, only specimens with enough material for the seven ICT assays and the reference test were included. Of note, because the asymptomatic individuals were not excluded, this first collection included patients with or without acute gastroenteritis (AGE) symptoms. Specimens were immediately stored at Ϫ20°C. The ICT assays were simultaneously performed on thawed samples from August to October 2014 at the National Reference Centre for Enteric Viruses, University Hospital of Dijon, France (NRCev), according to the manufacturer's instructions. The results of the assays were read by two laboratory technicians (plus a third laboratory technician in cases of discrepancies) blinded to the results of the initial rotavirus screening. The reference test was performed on the same thawed samples and on the same day as the ICT assays. This was an in-house real-time reverse transcriptionquantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) assay adapted from the literature (5) and allowed the simultaneous detection of the RVA VP2 coding gene and pAW109 inhibition control RNA (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA). The rotavirus strains were G and P genotyped according to the EuroRotaNet methods (www .eurorota.net/docs.php). For each ICT assay, the sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratios, and diagnostic odds ratio were calculated using Meta-DiSc software (6) and the statistical analysis (KruskalWallis nonparametric test) was performed with Stata software (StataCorp release 12, College Station, TX, USA)....