The etiological study on the outbreak of acute gastroenteritis in Chengde city of Hebei province

Objective To identify the pathogen resulting in an outbreak of acute gastroenteritis in Chengde city of Hebei province.Methods The stool specimens of patients with acute gastroenteritis were collected and the possible viral pathogen was detected by ELISA.Then the viral nucleic acid was extracted from the positive specimens and amplified with specific primers by PCR,which was sequenced and analyzed for its homology according to reference viral strain,finaly,the cause of disease was determine according to the results of laboratory detection combined with patients’ symptoms and epidemiological features.Results Among 21 stool specimens,6 specimens were positive for norovirus antigen,which belonged to type GII of norovirus identified by nucleic acid amplification and sequencing.The results of gene sequence analysis showed that the sequence of amplification fragment was highly similar to that of GII/12 subtype of norovirus.Conclusion The laboratory results confirm that the outbreak of acute gastroenteritis in Chengde city of Hebei province is caused by GII subtype of norovirus.