Genetic diversity and evolutionary insights of respiratory syncytial virus A ON1 genotype: global and local transmission dynamics

Human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) A ON1 genotype, first detected in 2010 in Ontario, Canada, has been documented in 21 countries to date. This study investigated persistence and transmission dynamics of ON1 by grouping 406 randomly selected RSV-positive specimens submitted to Public Health Ontario from August 2011 to August 2012; RSV-A-positive specimens were genotyped. We identified 370 RSV-A (181 NA1, 135 NA2, 51 ON1 3 GA5) and 36 RSV-B positive specimens. We aligned time-stamped second hypervariable region (330 bp) of G-gene sequence data (global, n = 483; and Ontario, n = 60) to evaluate transmission dynamics. Global data suggests that the most recent common ancestor of ON1 emerged during the 2008–2009 season. Mean evolutionary rate of the global ON1 was 4.10 × 10(−3) substitutions/site/year (95% BCI 3.1–5.0 × 10(−3)), not significantly different to that of Ontario ON1. The estimated mean reproductive number (R(0) = ∼ 1.01) from global and Ontario sequences showed no significant difference and implies stability among global RSV-A ON1. This study suggests that local epidemics exhibit similar underlying evolutionary and epidemiological dynamics to that of the persistent global RSV-A ON1 population. These findings underscore the importance of continual molecular surveillance of RSV in order to gain a better understanding of epidemics.