Respiratory Syncytial virus (RSV) is an important cause of acute lower respiratory tract infections in human, with infants and young children being particularly susceptible, In the temperate zones, sharp annual outbreaks of RSV occur during the
colder
months, in both the northern and the southern hemisphere. RSV is unusual in that it can repeatedly reinfect individuals throughout life and infect babies in the presence of maternal antibody. RSV isolates can be divided into two sub groups, A and
B, on
the basis of their reactions with monoclonal antibodies, and the two subgroups are also distinct at the nucleotide sequence level. The specific diagnosis of RSV infection was best made by isolation of virus in tissue culture, identification of
viral
antigen, or by specific serologic procedures. Recently, rapid detection of RSV and analysis of RSV strain variation became possible by development of methods of reverse transcription and polymerase chain reaction amplification.
In this study, to determine the genetic diversity of RSV found in Korea, 173 bp and 164 bp spanning selected regions of the RSVF and 3H genes were enzymatically amplified and sequenced, respectively. Eight for F gene and three for SH gene were
detected
in 66 nasopharyngeal swap samples tested. Two major antigenic subgroups, A and B were confirmed from Korean samples (seven for subgroup A and one for subgroup B). At the nucleotide level of the F gene region, Korean subgroup A strains showed
95-99%
homologies compared to the prototype A2 strain of subgroup A and 93-100% homologies among Korean subgroup A themselves. For the SH gene region, Korean subgroup A strain showed 97.5% homology compared to the prototype A2 strain of subgroup A, and
Korean
subgroup B strain showed 97% homology compared to the prototype 18537 strain of subgroup B. Most of base changes were transition and occured in codon position 3, which resulted in amino acid conservation, Using the maximum parsimony method,
phylogenetic
analysis indicated that Korean RSV strains formed a group with other RSV strains isolated from the United States, Canada, the Great Britain and Australia.
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