Molecular analysis of human adenoviral keratoconjunctivitis cases: Results of a 2-year survey

Objective: This study aimed to determine the adenovirus genotypes and their epidemiological features between January 2018 and Material and Methods: Conjunctival swab samples were obtained from patients who were clinically diagnosed with keratoconjunctivitis. Samples were screened with an Adeno Detector kit (Rapid Pathogen Screening, RPS Inc., South Williamsport, PA). Nucleic acid extraction and amplification were performed with the ADENOVIRUS ELITe MGB (R) kit in the ELITe In Genius instrument (Elitech Group, Torino, Italy). For subtyping of the strains, sequencing primers targeted the 'Hypervariable Region 7' (HVR-7) of the hexon gene were used. DNA sequence analysis (n:72) was performed with ABI PRISM (R) 3100 Genetic Analyzer (Applied Biosystems, USA), and subtyping was done by BLAST analysis.Results: The median viral load in the samples (n: 77) was 7 log10 copies/mL (IQR: 4.5-7.4 log10 copies/mL). The clinical finding score was found to be significantly higher in the high viral load group (Adenovirus DNA >= 6 Log 10 copies/mL) than in the low viral load group (Adenovirus DNA<6 Log 10 copies/mL) (p = 0.031).Conclusion: Our study analyzing hAdV strains collected in 2018 and 2019 revealed that genotype 8 is the dominant type (94.0%) in our region. Molecular methods are very useful for future epidemiological studies and the selection of a vaccine strain.