Molecular Epidemiology of Rotavirus in Central and Southeastern Europe

Rotavirus genotypes in children in the Basque Country (northern Spain) over a 13-year period (July 1996–June 2009)

“…In Europe, the new strains were initially detected in the United Kingdom (1995-1996) combined with P-type 6, which was replaced by P-type 8 in the next few years [18] A well-documented finding in this survey was the marked decrease in the current decade in the circulation of the G4 genotype. This genotype circulated widely in our environment in the 1990s but only sporadically after 1999, in line with prior reports in Spain [22] but in contrast with reports from other European regions [2,22,[24][25][26].…”

“…These genotypes were probably secondary to reassortment among co-circulating human genotypes [18,27] and were also the most frequent unusual combinations found in other regions [9,15,18,26]. The origin of these recombinant viruses probably lies in mixed infections, which were also infrequent in our study (2.9%).…”

“…Three strains belonging to G-types 6 (G6[P14]) and 8 (G8[P8] and G8 [P14]) were detected. G6 and G8 strains are frequently found in bovine cattle [9] and are rarely detected in human infections in Europe [14,15,18,21,25,26]. Human [P14] rotavirus strains have been reported exceptionally across the globe and probably represent occasional interspecies transmission from ruminants [28].…”

Human, porcine and bovine rotaviruses in Slovenia: evidence of interspecies transmission and genome reassortment

“…These two genotypes represented more than 80 % of all rotavirus strains analysed in this study. It was interesting that, in our region, G9P[8] has remained the second or third most prevalent genotype from the year of its first detection up to the end of this study (Steyer et al, 2005(Steyer et al, , 2007bTcheremenskaia et al, 2007). This supports the evidence of G9 importance in global rotavirus molecular epidemiology.…”

Molecular epidemiology of rotaviruses in Bulgaria: annual shift of the predominant genotype

“…The studies also revealed that children <1 year of age were the most affected (70%), and confirmed the winter seasonality of rotaviruses, with a peak in November-January and a 'shift' of predominant rotavirus electropherotype from one rotavirus season to another. In a previous study of the molecular epidemiology of rotaviruses in Bulgaria, which included a limited number of rotavirus-positive stool samples (n = 71), a change of the predominant rotavirus genotype during two consecutive rotavirus seasons was observed [28].…”