Department of Pediatrics, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, Missouri, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2011;6(12):e28647. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0028647. Epub 2011 Dec 9.
Astroviruses are a known cause of human diarrhea. Recently the highly divergent astrovirus MLB1 (MLB1) was identified in a stool sample from a patient with diarrhea. It has subsequently been detected in stool from individuals with and without diarrhea. To determine whether MLB1 is associated with diarrhea, we conducted a case control study of MLB1. In parallel, the prevalence of the classic human astroviruses (HAstVs) was also determined in the same case control cohort. 400 cases and 400 paired controls from a longitudinal birth cohort in Vellore, India were analyzed by RT-PCR. While HAstVs were associated with diarrhea (p = 0.029) in this cohort, MLB1 was not; 14 of the controls and 4 cases were positive for MLB1. Furthermore, MLB1 viral load did not differ significantly between the cases and controls. The role of MLB1 in human health still remains unknown and future studies are needed.
星状病毒是已知的人类腹泻病因。最近，从一名腹泻患者的粪便样本中鉴定出一种高度分化的星状病毒 MLB1（MLB1）。此后，在有和没有腹泻的个体的粪便中也检测到了 MLB1。为了确定 MLB1 是否与腹泻有关，我们对 MLB1 进行了病例对照研究。与此同时，在同一病例对照队列中也确定了经典人类星状病毒（HAstVs）的流行率。通过 RT-PCR 分析了来自印度维洛尔的纵向出生队列中的 400 例病例和 400 对配对对照。虽然在该队列中 HAstVs 与腹泻相关（p = 0.029），但 MLB1 并非如此；对照组中有 14 例和病例组中有 4 例 MLB1 阳性。此外，病例组和对照组之间的 MLB1 病毒载量没有显著差异。MLB1 在人类健康中的作用仍不清楚，需要进一步研究。
