The main danger of the new strain of rotavirus spreading in Moscow has been named

There is no vaccine against it yet

A new type of rotavirus from East Asia, originating from animals, has spread widely in Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow since last year. This problem was discussed by epidemiologists at the section “Molecular biological methods in the study of infectious pathology of the gastrointestinal tract,” which took place recently in St. Petersburg.

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The topic of a new genetic variant of rotavirus was raised by an employee of the Nizhny Novgorod Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology named after. Academician I.N. Blokhina, candidate of biological sciences Tatyana Sashina. She reported its wide distribution in Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow.

Rotavirus infection – This is an acute viral disease transmitted by the fecal-oral route. You can get it from a sick person. «Favorite» time of year for rotavirus — autumn and winter, when the immune system weakens. The incubation period lasts from 15 hours to several days. Symptoms: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, which are sometimes accompanied by fever.

At the heart of any rotavirus is a genome consisting of 11 RNA segments. Due to this “versatility” the virus is capable of reassortment — re-sorting of segments. This can happen when, during an epidemic, one cell becomes infected with several strains at once. 

According to Tatyana Sashina, a new type of rotavirus – G3P was first identified in 2013 in Australia and only then spread throughout the world. In Russia it has dominated since 2022. Its distinctive symptoms from other reassortants are a longer incubation period and a more acute form of the disease.

The NNIIEM recorded its appearance in Nizhny Novgorod back in 2016 and studied in detail all 11 of its segments. It turned out that the new variety of the virus does not have a single gene by which scientists could detect its relationship with local strains. But he has common “traits”: with similar strains from other countries. Thus, it could only get to Russia by importing it from abroad.

Photo: Ivan Skripalev

To determine the place of origin of the strain, experts carried out so-called phylogeographic modeling of 586 nucleotide sequences of the VP7 gene (it is common to all rotaviruses) from different countries. Comparing them with later strains from Nizhny Novgorod, identified in the period 2020-2022, they came to the conclusion that the new variant arose around 2002 in East Asia, combining from various animal rotaviruses.

To establish precisely, Where exactly the virus got to Russia, scientists could not, but most often the connection was traced with Japan and Thailand.

— Scientists know more than 50 genotypes of rotavirus. In Moscow alone last year there were nine of them. The new genotype does not differ significantly from the others in terms of symptoms. It could also come from different strains mixed in the same host. Currently, about 12 species of animals are known that can suffer from rotavirus. These are cattle, pigs, dogs, bats, etc.

The problem with rotavirus today is that the vaccines that exist in the world are made for strains that circulated before 2008. That is, the urgent task is to obtain a new recombinant universal vaccine against rotavirus, which could protect against a spectrum of strains.