Summary
Acute gastroenteritis is the major public health problem among infants and children worldwide and highly mortality and mortality were recorded in developing countries. Human bocavirus consist of four species, first one associated with respiratory tract infection while others have been described as enteric viruses mainly excreted in stool.
The current study is designed to determine the rate of human bocavirus infection among children less than 5 years of age with gastroenteritis in Diyala governorate using conventional polymerase chain reaction, to identify the human bocavirus genotypes, in addition to study the correlation between the rate of infection and different parameters such as age, gender, the education level of the mothers, water source, type of feeding and clinical aspects.
A cross sectional study was carried out for patients with acute gastroenteritis who attended the Emergency Department of Pediatrics in Al-Batool Teaching Hospital for Maternity and Pediatric in Baqubah city, during the period from July 2019 to March 2020. A total of 100 children under the age of five years old (58 males and 42 females). The stool samples were collected from each patient and stored at -70 °C until using conventional PCR to identify of HBoV genotypes.
The rate of HBoV infection according to the results of this study was 9%, the infection was higher (10.34%) in males rather than females (7.14%). The positive result in age group (6-12 months) was 5 (12.5%). Seven cases of the positive results were from Baqubah districts while 2 positive cases from other districts like Al-Khalis and Balad Ruz. The maternal’s educational level for patients were (9.09%) for illiterates and (12.12%) primary education, followed by (8.33%) with secondary education, while no positive result with high education.
The distribution of positive human bocavirus infection according to type of feeding showed that 4 cases (12.9%) were used mixed feeding, 3 cases (5.36%) were used artificial milk and 2 cases (18.18%) were used breast feeding while no infection noticed with children used food only. The highest infection rate was 4(13.33%) for groups of children use filtered water and 4(8%) use boiled filtered water.
The positive children for human bocavirus presented with different gastrointestinal signs high frequency noticed with weight loss 9(100%) abdominal pain 7(77.77%) and vomiting 6(66.66%).
According to the genetic analysis of the sequence of four samples (4 out of 9 positive cases for conventional polymerase chain reaction), three of them belong to human bocavirus type 3, while the fourth related to human bocavirus type 2.
