Detection of human metapneumovirus in patients with acute respiratory tract infections in Xuzhou Area

Objective The present study was conducted to establish a sensitive and effective method to detect human metapneumovirus (hMPV) in our laboratory，fred out the status of hMPV infection in patients with acute respiratory tract infections in Xuzhou Area，analyze the epidemio-logical and clinical characteristics among the hMPV-infected population in Xuzhou Area，and pro-vide some basis for the research of hMPV．Methods The throat swabs were collected among the patients with acute respiratory tract infections (RTI) at the respiratory clinics of hospitals．The nu-cleoprotein gene was detected by RT-PCR and compared with the whole sequence of hMPV in GemBank after the sequence of the amplification products were determined．Results After 75 samples collected from January 2005 to March 2005 were detected by RT-PCR，it was confirmed that N gene was positive in 12 samples with the detection rate of 16.O％．All the amplification products were compared by the analysis of the gene sequence．Conclusion There existed hMPV infection in acute respiratory system diseases in Xuzhou Area．And about 16.0％ of the patients with acute respiratory system diseases were due to hMPV infection，of which children under the age of 6 years accounted for 50％．The main symptoms of the patients with hMPV infection were high fever and cough．