Prevalence of human bocavirus 1 among people without gastroenteritis symptoms in South Korea between 2008 and 2010

To investigate the prevalence of human bocavirus (HBoV) among people without gastroenteritis symptoms in South Korea between 2008 and 2010, an epidemiological study was performed on fecal samples of 320 people aged 2 months to 91 years. The prevalence of HBoV-1 was 12.5 % (40/320) of the study population by PCR. Co-infection with adenovirus was found in six samples (1.9 %). According to nucleotide sequence analysis, all 40 Korean HBoVs strains belonged to the HBoV-1 group and showed high sequence identity to each other, ranging from 94.3-99.7 %. These findings suggest that HBoV-1 is highly prevalent across age groups among people without gastroenteritis symptoms.