Genetic characterization of contemporary wild-type measles viruses from Vietnam and the Peopleʹs Republic of China: identification of two genotypes within clade H

Genetic characterization was conducted on 17 wild-type measles viruses isolated near Hanoi, Vietnam, during 1998 as well as on eight viruses isolated in the Hunan, Hainan, Shandong, and Anhui provinces of the Peopleʹs Republic of China during 1995, 1998, and 1999. Previous studies had shown that, compared to wild-type measles viruses found in other parts of the world, wild-type viruses from China were genetically distinct and comprised a new clade of viruses, clade H. In this study, sequence analyses of the nucleotides coding for the COOH terminal 150 amino acids of the nucleoprotein (N) and the entire hemagglutinin (H) protein indicated that although all of the viruses from Vietnam were members of clade H, they were clearly distinct from the Chinese viruses. With the exception of MVi/Beijing.China/94/1, the Vietnamese viruses differed from all of the Chinese viruses by at least 3.5 and 2.5% at the nucleotide level for the N and H genes, respectively. These data suggest that clade H should be divided into two genotypes with the Chinese viruses placed in genotype H1 and the Vietnamese viruses in genotype H2. Sequence analysis of measles viruses imported into the United States from either China or Vietnam demonstrated that this designation of genotypes will be helpful in future measles surveillance activities.