We studied the shedding of rotavirus by newborn children in the nurseries of a large maternity hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, throughout the year 1982. Sixty-two (57%) of 108 children examined shed the virus within the first few days of life. Four (6%) of the 62 children who shed rotavirus had diarrhea but only one of them required oral rehydration therapy. The rotavirus specimens were identified as subgroup 2 in an ELISA subgrouping assay that employs monoclonal antibodies. Analysis of the RNA extracted from 52 of the samples by electrophoresis revealed a similar migration pattern in all the specimens; their identity was confirmed by crosshybridization analyses which revealed a strong degree of genomic homology among the strains studied.
The sequence of the VP7 gene from 19 rotavirus strains recovered from asymptomatically infected newborn infants was determined by direct analysis of transcript RNAs synthesized from virus present in the stool. For five viruses the entire VP7 gene was sequenced, whereas in the remaining instances only a portion of the gene could be sequenced. In 19 specimens collected over a 4-year period, only five nucleotide substitutions were detected. None of them resulted in an amino acid substitution. Examination of a 306-nucleotide segment of gene 4 in 11 specimens yielded similar results. These results suggest that the mutation rate of rotaviruses in nature is lower than that of single-stranded RNA viruses such as poliovirus and influenza virus.
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