Abstract
Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is a leading cause of acute respiratory tract infection, with the greatest impact on infants, immunocompromised individuals, and older adults. RSV prevalence decreased substantially in the United States (US) following the implementation of COVID-19-related non-pharmaceutical interventions but later rebounded with abnormal seasonality. The biological and epidemiological factors underlying this altered behavior remain poorly defined. In this retrospective cohort study from 2009 to 2023 in Chicago, Illinois, US, we examined RSV epidemiology, clinical severity, and genetic diversity. We found that changes in RSV diagnostic platforms drove increased detections in outpatient settings post-2020 and that hospitalized adults infected with RSV-A were at higher risk of intensive care admission than those with RSV-B. While population structures of RSV-A remained unchanged, RSV-B exhibited a genetic shift into geographically distinct clusters. Mutations in the antigenic regions of the fusion protein suggest convergent evolution with potential implications for vaccine and therapeutic development.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Article number | 3374 |
Journal | Nature communications |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2024 |
Funding
The authors are grateful for the assistance from Maryam Shaaban and Dulce Garcia for their assistance with specimen banking. This research was supported in part through the computational resources and staff contributions provided by the Genomics Compute Cluster which is jointly supported by the Feinberg School of Medicine, the Center for Genetic Medicine, and Feinberg\u2019s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, the Office of the Provost, the Office for Research, and Northwestern Information Technology. The Genomics Compute Cluster is part of Quest, Northwestern University\u2019s high-performance computing facility, to advance genomics research. The storage and access to the clinical metadata in the manuscript was supported in part by the Northwestern Medicine Enterprise Data Warehouse, supported by Northwestern University Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS - UL1TR001422). We thank the authors and institutions who deposited RSV sequences via NIH NCBI, and who were instrumental in the larger national and international analyses. We additionally thank the Chicago Department of Public Health Vaccine-Preventable Disease Surveillance unit, particularly Enrique Ramirez, for sharing RSV laboratory data in Chicago. Funding for this work was provided by: the Quantitative Biosciences Institute Coronavirus Research Group (QCRG) Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) center (NIH U19AI171110), the Successful Clinical Response to Pneumonia Therapy (SCRIPT) Center (NIH U19AI135964), and by institutional support for the Center for Pathogen Genomics and Microbial Evolution. E.R.G. was supported by (NIH T32AI007476). The funding sources had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or writing of the report.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Chemistry
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
- General Physics and Astronomy