Environmental Surveillance of Genogroup I and II Noroviruses in Shandong Province, China in 2013

Abstract

Noroviruses are the most common cause of epidemic gastroenteritis. However, the case-based surveillance is limited in China. In this study, we analyzed the results of environmental surveillance conducted in two cities of Shandong Province, China from January to December in 2013. Twenty-four sewage samples were collected and concentrated via membrane absorption/elution method. After reverse transcription-PCR, cloning and sequencing on ORF2 region, norovirus nucleic acid was detected in all 24 sewage samples. A total of 403 norovirus sequences of 16 genotypes were detected, among which GII.3 (22.6%), GI.2 (17.1%), GI.5 (13.4%), GI.3 (11.9%), GII.4 (7.7%), and GII.6 (6.7%) were the 6 most common genotypes. Phylogenetic analysis revealed multiple lineages within most common genotypes, especially in GI.3, whereas all GII.4 sequences belonged to Sydney 2012 strain. Recombination events were observed in 5 GI and 4 GII sequences within or near the ORF1/ORF2 overlap. This is the first report on systematic environmental surveillance on norovirus in China. The data presented here reveal co-circulation and high genetic diversity of multiple norovirus genotypes in the two cities, and suggest continued environmental surveillance can provide valuable information on norovirus circulation in the population.

Metagenomic Sequencing for Surveillance of Food- and Waterborne Viral Diseases

“…While this model does not allow estimating the foodborne disease where food is a vehicle for person-to-person transmission, which is common for noroviruses, it has been used with some success to quantify the contribution of foodborne viral disease stemming from environmentally contaminated food (e.g., associated with shellfish; ( Verhoef et al, 2015 )). This builds from the observation that there is a large discrepancy between the norovirus variants in clinical settings and environmental samples ( Tao et al, 2015 ; Kazama et al, 2016 ). Norovirus GII.4, found in clinical setting, is generally related to person-to-person transmission, however, several other norovirus genotypes and genogroups were found in environmental samples in the same area.…”

Norovirus GII.17: The Emergence and Global Prevalence of a Novel Variant

“…Such waterborne GII.17 outbreaks have been reported in many countries, for example, the USA, in 2005 [43]; South Korea, in 2008-2012 [44]; Guatemala, in 2009 [45]; and China, in 2014-2015 [16,46]. Moreover, many GII.17 sequences were also detected in environmental water samples from around the world, such as Shandong (China) [47], Singapore [48,49], Japan [50,51], South Africa [52,53], Kenya [54] and New Orleans (USA) [40] .…”

Identifying Potential Norovirus Epidemics in China via Internet Surveillance

“…Field surveys imply that unboiled water and contaminated food are the common causes of norovirus infection [ 12 , 17 ]. The high contagiosity, frequent virus mutation, and limited immune protection has resulted in more frequent epidemics of norovirus outbreak on the Chinese mainland since the winter of 2014, especially in schools [ 18 - 20 ]. Norovirus infection is classified as “other infectious diarrhea” (excluding the illness of cholera, bacillary dysentery, amebic dysentery, and typhoid/paratyphoid) in the Chinese National Notifiable Infectious Disease Reporting System.…”