A recent resurgence of mumps in doubly vaccinated cohorts has been observed, identifying genotype G as the current predominant genotype. In this study, the neutralization efficacy of guinea pig sera immunized with three vaccine viruses: L-Zagreb, Urabe AM9 and JL5, was tested against seven mumps viruses: three vaccine strains and four wild-type strains (two of genotype G, one of genotype C, one of genotype D) isolated during 1998-2011. All sera neutralized all viruses although at different levels. The neutralization efficiency of sera decreases several fold by temporal order of virus isolation. Therefore, we concluded that gradual evolution of mumps viruses, rather than belonging to a certain genotype, results in an antigenic divergence from the vaccine strains that decrease the neutralization capacity of vaccine-induced antibodies. Moreover, the amino-acid sequence alignment revealed three new potentially relevant regions for escape from neutralization, i.e. 113-130, 375-403 and 440-443.
Human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV) is a common etiological agent of acute lower respiratory tract disease in infants. The molecular epidemiology of HRSV in Croatia over four consecutive seasons (from 2006 to 2008) was investigated. A total of 72 HRSV samples were chosen from 696 screened cases in a pediatric clinic in Zagreb. Molecular characterization of HRSV revealed the predominance of HRSV group B viruses in the first two epidemic seasons and HRSV group A viruses in the next two seasons. According to the phylogenetic analysis, NA1 and BA9 were the predominant circulating HRSV genotypes detected during the study. Overall, 82.9% of all HRSV A strains belonged to the NA1 genotype. The HRSV B genotype BA9, detected in two consecutive seasons (2006 and 2007), was the predominant circulating HRSV B genotype, accounting for 80.6% of all HRSV B strains. This study provides data on the circulation pattern of HRSV genotypes in Croatia and their molecular characterization.
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