Association between circulating rotavirus genotypes and histo-blood group antigens in the children hospitalized with acute gastroenteritis in Iran

Rotaviruses are the dominant cause of severe acute gastroenteritis in children under 5 years of age. Previous studies showed that some children are less susceptible to rotavirus gastroenteritis. It has been shown that this resistance depends on the rotavirus genotype and also human histo-blood group antigens (HBGAs), which works as a receptor for rotavirus surface protein (VP4). The present study aimed to evaluate the human genetic susceptibility to rotavirus gastroenteritis in Iran and to obtain a comparative analysis between rotavirus gastroenteritis and secretor or Lewis status in case and control groups in the Iranian population. The study was performed on fecal specimens from 108 children with acute rotavirus gastroenteritis from 2015 to 2017. A total of 50 fecal specimens from children with acute gastroenteritis of unknown etiology were also used as a control group. After the genotyping of positive rotavirus cases and human HBGAs by Sanger sequencing, the phylogenetic tree analysis showed that all rotavirus strains from Iran belonged to PII. The most common genotype was P8 (n = 102; 94.4%), while the remaining belonged to P4 (n = 3; 2.8%) and P6 (n = 3; 2.8%) genotypes. The P8 genotype was found to be associated with secretor and Lewis positive status (p <.05). © 2021 Wiley Periodicals LL