Abstract

The variability between respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) strains is one of the features of RSV infections that might contribute to the ability of the virus to infect people repeatedly and cause yearly outbreaks. To study themolecular epidemiology of RSV, more than 1,400 RSV isolates from human nasopharyngeal aspirates or nasal or throat swabs from patients with respiratory illness were identified and differentiated by TaqMan reverse transcription-PCR into groups A and B. RSV group A was dominant in seven out of nine epidemic seasons. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that RSV group A genotypes GA2 and GA5 circulated from 1998