Blood virosphere in febrile Tanzanian children - Cordey, S.; Laubscher, F.; Hartley, M. A.; Junier, T.; Keitel, K.; Docquier, M.; Guex, N.; Iseli, C.; Vieille, G.; Le Mercier, P.; Gleizes, A.; Samaka, J.; et al. (Emerg Microbes Infect, 2021)
Viral infections are the leading cause of childhood acute febrile illnesses motivating consultation in sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of causal viruses are never identified in low-resource clinical settings as such testing is either not part of routine screening or available diagnostic tools have limited ability to detect new/unexpected viral variants. An in-depth exploration of the blood virome is therefore necessary to clarify the potential viral origin of fever in children. Metagenomic next-generation sequencing is a powerful tool for such broad investigations, allowing the detection of RNA and DNA viral genomes. Here, we describe the blood virome of 816 febrile children (<5 years) presenting at outpatient departments in Dar es Salaam over one-year. We show that half of the patients (394/816) had at least one detected virus recognized as causes of human infection/disease (13.8% enteroviruses (enterovirus A, B, C, and rhinovirus A and C), 12% rotaviruses, 11% human herpesvirus type 6). Additionally, we report the detection of a large number of viruses (related to arthropod, vertebrate or mammalian viral species) not yet known to cause human infection/disease, highlighting those who should be on the radar, deserve specific attention in the febrile paediatric population and, more broadly, for surveillance of emerging pathogens.Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02225769.
Keywords: journalArticle; Blood virome; Child, Preschool; Fever/*virology; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; Humans; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Metagenomics/*methods; Retrospective Studies; Sequence Analysis, DNA; Sequence Analysis, RNA; Tanzania; Virus Diseases/*blood/virology; Viruses/*classification/genetics/isolation & purification; children; fever; metagenomic next-generation sequencing; virosphere