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Lijuan Lu [] and Huaqing Zhong [] and Liyun Su [] and Lingfeng Cao [] and Menghua Xu [] and Niuniu Dong [] and Jin Xu [] and []

Academic Editor: Paul-Louis Woerther

Department of Clinical Laboratory, Children’s Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai 201102, China, fudan.edu.cn

Received Aug 28, 2017; Revised Nov 22, 2017; Accepted Nov 29, 2017

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1. Introduction

Acute diarrhea is a major disease caused by various pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and parasites in all humans, but especially in children aged under 5 years. This condition remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, especially in developing areas. More than 50% of all diarrhea episodes have been found to be induced by viral pathogens [1]. Among the different kinds of diarrheal viruses, group A rotavirus (RVA) and human calicivirus (HuCV) have been identified as the major causes of acute diarrhea worldwide. Human adenovirus (HAdV) and human astrovirus (HAstV) have also been recognized as two additional primary causes of infectious diarrhea in pediatric patients [2, 3].

HAdVs are members of the genus Mastadenovirus in the family Adenoviridae and cause a wide spectrum of acute and chronic diseases, including acute diarrhea, respiratory illnesses, pneumonias, and pharyngoconjunctival fever [4]. HAdV is a linear, double-stranded DNA virus with a genome size of 26–45 kb. Following the development of phylogenetic and bioinformatic technologies, sequence-based typing strategies have been shown to serve as more rapid or sensitive methods than immunospecific methods for visualization via electron microscopy for HAdV detection. Over 70 HAdV genotypes in seven species (HAdV A–G) have been characterized and classified phylogenetically according to their nucleic acid characteristics and homologies as well as their hexon and fiber protein characteristics since HAdV was first isolated in 1953 [4, 5]. Among these species, HAdV-F types HAdV-40 and -41 have been found to be frequent causes of pediatric diarrhea and, as such, are known as enteric adenoviruses. Other adenoviruses are regarded as “nonenteric” adenoviruses. HAdV is not only considered a significant pathogen that occurs in association with sporadic acute diarrhea but is also a major enteropathogen responsible for nosocomial...

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