Seroepidemiology of Human Bocavirus Infection in Jamaica

Hustedt, Joshua W.; Christie, Celia; Hustedt, Madison M.; Esposito, Daina; Vazquez, Marietta

Data were analyzed with the use of SPSS 18.0. Standard errors for proportions were calculated using standard statistical analysis. Subjects with and without serologic evidence of past HBoV infection were compared with respect to hospitalization status and age group using chi-squared tests for categorical variables and ttests for continuous variables. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine significance in a final model. For all tests, a twotailed critical alpha of 0.05 defined statistical significance. Overall, 220 (76.7%) of the 287 serum specimens were seropositive for HBoV antibody. Proportion of seropositivity varied by age group (Figure 1 ). Although 80% of newborns at birth were seropositive for HBoV, this proportion decreased to 50% by six months of age. After six months of age the proportion of seropositive subjects rapidly rebounded, so that by the age of 24 months .80% of children were seropositive. Age was a significant predictor of HBoV exposure in all children (P,0.001), with HBoV seropositive children being older (average age 30.3617.3 months) than HBoV seronegative children (average age 17.8612.7 months) In order to determine if hospitalization was associated with HBoV exposure we characterized sub-groups of 84 hospitalized children from the inpatient pediatrics wards and compared them to 118 non-hospitalized children from the well child clinics (all of whom had never previously been hospitalized). For these comparisons all children from the sub-specialty clinics, neonatal intensive care, pediatric trauma, and special care were excluded on the basis of our inability to determine their previous hospitalization history; and all neonates (,1 month) were also excluded under the premise that a majority of positive values in this age group would represent maternal antibody, not previous HBoV exposure.