Identification of a Novel Polyomavirus from Patients with Acute Respiratory Tract Infections
Two human polyomaviruses, BK and JC, were identified in 1971 and infect the majority of humans around the world. These two viruses are closely related to each other and are both are pathogenic in immunocompromised individuals. Earlier this year, a third polyomavirus, KI, was described in human clinical specimens, although its pathogenicity and prevalence in humans has not yet been established. Here we report the identification of a novel polyomavirus (WU) present in respiratory secretions from human patients with symptoms of acute respiratory tract infection. The virus was initially detected in a nasopharyngeal aspirate from a 3-year-old child from Australia diagnosed with pneumonia. The virus genome is 5,229 bp long and phylogenetic analysis shows that the WU virus was divergent from all known polyomaviruses. Screening of 2,135 patients with acute respiratory tract infections in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, and St. Louis, Missouri, United States, using PCR resulted in the detection of 43 additional specimens that contained WU virus. The presence of multiple instances of the virus in two continents suggests that this virus is geographically widespread in the human population and raises the possibility that the WU virus may be a human pathogen. The discovery of WU virus brings the number of polyomaviruses detected in humans to four. WU differs from BK and JC significantly in its genome sequence and in its relative tissue tropism, suggesting that it is likely to have unique biological properties. This discovery raises many questions for further investigation, such as, Is WU virus a human pathogen? If so, what kind of disease does it cause? Where in the body does WU virus reside? At what age does infection typically occur? Perhaps most importantly, there are likely to be many more as of yet unidentified viruses infecting the human body.
Identification of a Novel Polyomavirus from Patients with Acute Respiratory Tract Infections.
PLoS Pathogens Vol. 3, No. 5, e64
