Molecular epidemiology of rotavirus in Delhi.

Rotavirus is now established as an important cause of childhood diarrhoea throughout the world. Despite the availability of more advanced techniques for HRV characterization, electropherotyping was employed in this study to demonstrate the occurrence of diverse electropherotypes & any aberrant types thereof in isolates from children with acute gastroenteritis in Delhi, keeping in mind the ease of availability, performance and discriminatory power. Faecal specimens from 1172 children suffering from acute gastroenteritis were subjected to enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). A total of 158 rotavirus strains were detected and electropherotyped by PAGE. Rotavirus was detected in 13.48% of the samples. A total of 10 electropherotypic patterns were observed to be in circulation. There was predominance of the long type over the short type and long type G was the most common isolate. The present study highlights the simultaneous coexistence of different electropherotypes of Human rotavirus strains circulating in Delhi and stresses the need for constant monitoring of the genomic diversity resulting from extensive genomic variation among Rotaviruses.