Adenovirus Serotype 14 Infection, New Brunswick, Canada, 2011

Gabriel Girouard

, Richard Garceau, Louise Thibault, Youcef Oussedik, Nathalie Bastien, and Yan Li

Author affiliations: Author affiliations: Centre hospitalier universitaire Dr-Georges-L.-Dumont, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada (G. Girouard, R. Garceau, L. Thibault, Y. Oussedik); Public Health Agency of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (N. Bastien, Y Li)

Abstract

We describe 3 culture-proven cases of adenovirus serotype 14 infection in New Brunswick, Canada, during the summer of 2011. Strains isolated from severely ill patients were closely related to strains of a genomic variant, adenovirus 14p1, circulating in the United States and Ireland. Physicians in Canada should be aware of this emerging adenovirus.

Originally discovered in 1955, human adenovirus serotype 14 (HAdV-14) had rarely been reported in medical literature for over 30 years. This archetype strain, known as “agent de Wit,” seemed to have almost vanished from Earth and had not been identified in the Western Hemisphere (1). Since 2005, however, the number of reports of a newly emerging HAdV-14 strain has increased, mainly across the United States (2), and in 2009, cases were identified in Ireland (3). This strain, currently designated as HAdV-14p1, was confirmed by enzymatic restrictions profiles as a new genomic variant, and it has a unique signature 6-nt deletion in the knob region of the fiber gene (4). Outbreaks among communities and military training camps have been described, all showing high rates of infection and increased risk for hospitalization and death (5,6). It is not known whether this new circulating variant is truly more virulent or whether current reports represent only the severe side of the natural clinical spectrum of HAdV-14 in immunologically naive populations (7).