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Updated: Apr 30, 2026
A Rapid Strategy for the Isolation of New Faustoviruses from Environmental Samples Using Vermamoeba vermiformis
Published on: June 4, 2016
New astrovirus in human feces from Burkina Faso
Tung Gia Phan1, Johan Nordgren2, Djeneba Ouermi3
1Blood Systems Research Institute, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA; Department of Laboratory Medicine, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA.
Background:
A significant fraction of cases of diarrhea, a leading cause of childhood mortality worldwide, remain unexplained.
Objectives:
To identify viruses in unexplained cases of diarrhea using an unbiased metagenomics approach.
Study Design:
Viral nucleic acids were enriched from the feces from 48 cases of unexplained diarrhea from Burkina Faso, sequenced, and compared against all known viral genomes.
Results:
The full genome of a highly divergent astrovirus was sequenced in a sample co-infected with parechovirus 1. RT-PCR identified a single astrovirus infection in these 48 patients indicating a low prevalence. Human astrovirus-BF34 was most closely related to mamastrovirus species 8 and 9 also found in human with which it shared 62%, 74%, and 57% amino acid identities over its protease, RNA dependent RNA polymerase and capsid proteins, respectively.
Conclusions:
Burkina Faso astrovirus is proposed as prototype for a novel species in the genus Mamastrovirus, here tentatively called Mamastrovirus 20, representing the fifth human astrovirus species.
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