Acute gastroenteritis caused by viruses is one of the leading causes of infantile morbidity. The aim of the present study was to investigate the presence of human caliciviruses of the genera norovirus and sapovirus in children up to 3 years of age with acute gastroenteritis from low-income communities in the city of Salvador, Brazil. This study is an extension of previous work carried out to es...

1. Lopman BA, Brown DW, Koopmans M. Human caliciviruses in Europe. J Clin Virol. 2002;24:137–60. 2. Lambden PR, Caul EO, Ashley CR, Clarke IN. Human enteric caliciviruses are genetically distinct from small round structured viruses. Lancet. 1994;343:666–7. 3. Chiba S, Sakuma Y, Kogasaka R, Akihara M, Horino K, Nakao T, et al. An outbreak of gastroenteritis associated with calicivirus in an infa...

A porcine enteric calicivirus (PEC), strain Cowden in the family Caliciviridae (genus Sapovirus), can be propagated in a continuous cell line, LLC-PK cells, but only in the presence of an intestinal content fluid filtrate from gnotobiotic pigs. This cell culture system is presently the only in vitro model among caliciviruses that cause gastrointestinal disease, including members of the genera S...

BACKGROUND Noroviruses (NoVs) are important enteric pathogens that cause gastroenteritis worldwide. The first documented NoV outbreaks in South Africa (SA) were described in 1993. The current NoV prevalence and circulating genotypes are unknown. SA lacks NoV outbreak reporting systems and therefore the number and impact of NoV infections is underestimated. OBJECTIVES This study aimed to deter...

A primer pair (p289-p290) designed to detect both noroviruses and sapoviruses by reverse transcription-PCR (Jiang et al., J. Virol. Methods 83:145, 1999) cross-reacts with rotaviruses. The rotavirus amplicon corresponds to genome segment 1. Furthermore, primer pair p289-p290 detected rotaviruses as efficiently as rotavirus-specific primers directed to rotavirus gene 4.

AIM To investigate the diversity of human caliciviruses (HuCVs) in wastewater from small- to medium-sized communities in five provinces of South Africa (SA). METHODS AND RESULTS Wastewater samples (51) were screened for norovirus (NoV) GI, GII, GIV and sapovirus (SaV) using real-time reverse transcription (RT)-PCR. Partial capsid nucleotide sequences were analysed for genotyping. At least one...

The human sapovirus (SaV) causes acute gastroenteritis mainly in infants and young children. A food-borne outbreak of gastroenteritis associated with SaV occurred among junior high school students in Yokohama, Japan, during and after a study trip. The nucleotide sequences of the partial capsid gene derived from the students exhibited 98% homology to a SaV genogroup IV strain, Hu/Angelholm/SW278...