Article ID: JJID.2019.280
Varicella-zoster virus (VZV), the cause of chickenpox and zoster, was fully sequenced and the first vaccine as the human herpesvirus. VZV is relatively genetic stable, therefore, its global surveillance clades provides essential information for VZV evolution, immigration and importation of different viral strains and recombination events. Eighty-eight VZV isolates from China (Shanghai and Urumqi) were genotyped using a scattered single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) method in this prospective study. Our results were based on sequencing open reading frames (ORFs) 1, 6, 12, 16, 17, 21, 22, 35, 37, 38, 50, 54, 55, 56, 60, and 66. We found that the majority of these 88 strains (81.8%) belonged to Clade 2 with significantly high homogeneity from Shanghai. However, in Urumqi area, some strains were grouped to Clade 5 and some could not be attributed to any of the established VZV clades, although the majority of Urumqi strains belonged to Clade 2. Our results illustrated that due to geographic location, VZV could undergo genetic recombination. This data suggests that VZV diversity is more complicated in certain areas and geographical separation contributes to VZV complexity.
