Extended Outbreak of Cryptosporidiosis in a Pediatric Hospital, China - Vol. 18 No. 2 - February 2012 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal - CDC

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Extended Outbreak of Cryptosporidiosis in a Pediatric Hospital, China - Vol. 18 No. 2 - February 2012 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal - CDC

Volume 18, Number 2—February 2012

Dispatch

Extended Outbreak of Cryptosporidiosis in a Pediatric Hospital, China

Article Contents

• The Study
• Conclusions
• Acknowledgments
• References
• Table
• Suggested Citation

Yaoyu Feng , Lin Wang, Liping Duan, Luis A. Gomez-Puerta, Longxian Zhang, Xukun Zhao, Jingjing Hu, Nan Zhang, and Lihua Xiao

Author affiliations: East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China (Y. Feng, L. Wang, X. Zhao, J. Hu, N. Zhang); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA (L. Wang, L. Duan, L.A. Gomez-Puerta, L. Xiao); Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, PRC (L. Zhang)

Suggested citation for this article

Abstract

Four Cryptosporidium spp. and 6 C. hominis subtypes were isolated from 102 of 6,284 patients in 3 pediatric hospitals in People’s Republic of China. A cryptosporidiosis outbreak was identified retrospectively. The outbreak lasted >1 year and affected 51.4% of patients in 1 hospital ward, where 2 C. hominis subtypes with different virulence were found.

Since the 1980s, ≈20 outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis have been reported in health care facilities (1–9). Thus far, to our knowledge, genotyping and subtyping tools have not been used in the investigation of this type of outbreak (10). We used subtyping in a molecular epidemiologic study of endemic cryptosporidiosis to retrospectively identify an extended outbreak among children in a hospital ward.