Rotavirus is the major cause of severe diarrhea among infants and young children. Rotaviruses, belonging to a genus of double-stranded RNA viruses in the family Reoviridae, infect the mature villus epithelial cells of the small intestine, often leading to fever, vomiting, and diarrhea in children.
This study was carried out to investigate molecular epidermiology of rotaviruses in northern Gyeonggi-Do. During 3 years surveilence (August 2007 through July 2010) for patients with acute gastroenteritis in northern Gyeonggi-Do, 347 out of 5,872 stool samples were selected as rotavirus-positive specimens by means of antigen-capture enzyme-linkes immunosorbent assay(ELISA).
The peak seasons of rotavirus infection were winter and spring , from December to May. To survey genotyping of rotavirus was performed the RT-PCR using 137 samples out of 347 rotavirus-positive samples. The predominant genotypes were confirmed as G3P[8](47 samples, 34.3%) followed by G1P[8](31 samples, 22.6%), G2P[4](20 samples, 14.6%), G4P[6](12 samples, 8.76%), G9P[8](6 samples, 4.38%).
In this study, the distribution and genotype of rotavirus would provide the useful information to establish the preventing strategy of rotavirus and of developing vaccines which will be used in northern Gyeonggi-Do. Thus, Continuous monitoring of the genetic diversity of rotavirus is important to determine the trend of genotype.