Epidemiology of Human Adenoviruses: A 20-Year Retrospective Observational Study in Hospitalized Patients in Bern, Switzerland

Akello, Joyce Odeke; Kamgang, Richard; Barbani, Maria Teresa; Suter-Riniker, Franziska; Leib, Stephen L; Ramette, Alban

In conclusion, our study gives insight on HAdV infections from the largest hospital in Bern and other regional clinics serving the Swiss population. Patients of various age categories were identified to be infected, with peak years in 2009 and 2010. In these 2 years, HAdV8 was identified as the predominant genotypes and was associated with HAdV infections among young adults, middle aged and the elderly, whilst HAdV2 and HAdV1 genotypes were identified to be predominantly causing HAdV infection among young children. The findings support that variation in the clinical presentation and epidemiology of HAdV genotypes exists, and may present unexpected patterns when long-term records are examined. By uncovering HAdV molecular epidemiology and its clinical presentations in our 20-year observation study, we have highlighted the existence of differences in HAdV infections among various age categories and circulating HAdV genotypes. Future work will be performed to sequence the whole genomes of representative HAdV isolates to assess the recombination potential in our strain collection.