State of the Art of Norovirus Detection and Molecular Epidemiology
Jan Vinjé
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Jan Vinjé Ph.D. is Head of the National Calicivirus Laboratory and Director of CaliciNet at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, GA. Dr. Vinjé received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands in 1999. After a postdoc and an appointment as research assistant professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, he joined CDC in 2006. Over the past 11 years, he has served on several program advisory committees from several European research projects (FP6, FP7). He is serving as technical expert on the norovirus subcommittee of the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and is the current Chair of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses study groups on Caliciviridae. He is currently a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and associate editor of the journal Food and Environmental Virology and he serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for journals such as Nature, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Virology, Applied and Environmental Virology. Dr. Vinjé has published over 140 peer reviewed publications and several book chapters and he is a guest lecturer at Emory and the University of Georgia. His research interests include all aspects of viral gastrointestinal disease including detection, characterization, molecular epidemiology, immunology and prevention and control of norovirus infections.
Abstract
Noroviruses are the leading cause of epidemic and sporadic acute gastroenteritis in humans worldwide. Although TaqMan-based RT-PCR assays continue to serve as robust methods for the sensitive detection of noroviruses, new... [ view full abstract ]
Noroviruses are the leading cause of epidemic and sporadic acute gastroenteritis in humans worldwide. Although TaqMan-based RT-PCR assays continue to serve as robust methods for the sensitive detection of noroviruses, new technologies such as next generation sequencing and digital PCR have become available and have great potential for detection and typing of these viruses including in environmental samples. Since 2009, norovirus outbreaks in the United States are reported to a national norovirus outbreak surveillance network (CaliciNet) and several networks to capture rate of endemic disease including the New Vaccine Surveillance Network (NVSN) provide often realtime information including genotype distribution and newly emerging strains. Since 2002, new GII.4 variants emerge every 2-3 years and have caused the majority of norovirus infections worldwide. GII.4 Sydney viruses caused the majority of outbreaks during the 3-year study. In November 2015, a new GII.4 virus emerged which had more than 2% nucleotide difference with the GII.Pe-GII.4 Sydney viruses that circulated since 2012. Complete genome sequencing showed that this strain was a recombinant GII.4 Sydney capsid type with a GII.P16 polymerase type (GII.P16-GII.4 Sydney). ORF1 sequences including the GII.P16 polymerase gene has been associated with additional genotypes including GII.2, GII.3, and GII.13 whereas GII.Pe was primarily associated with GII.4 Sydney, but also with GII.13 and GII.17 viruses. These results indicate that both emerging of new GII.4 capsid variants as well as ORF1-ORF2 recombinants have become major drivers in the epidemiology of norovirus and that dual typing of norovirus strains should become standard for strain surveillance in both clinical and environmental samples. With a vaccine in the pipeline, expanding norovirus surveillance globally and include sporadic norovirus gastroenteritis in children under 5 years of age in low and middle income countries where the burden is highest, becomes very important to monitor trends in genotype distribution and emergence of new recombinant viruses.
Session
KN-05 » Keynote Jan Vinjé, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, USA (08:30 - Wednesday, 17th May, Bailey Allen 1)
