Characterization and Comparison of Genetic Variation in Clinical Varicella-Zoster Virus Isolates Collected from Shanghai and Urumqi, China

Varicella-zoster virus (VZV) is a ubiquitous human herpesvirus that causes chickenpox and zoster. Considering that VZV is a relatively and genetically stable virus, its global surveillance clades provide essential information for VZV evolution, immigration, and importation of different viral strains and recombination events. Eighty-eight VZV isolates from China (Shanghai and Urumqi) were genotyped using a scattered single-nucleotide polymorphism method in this prospective study. Our results were based on sequencing the open reading frames 1, 6, 12, 16, 17, 21, 22, 35, 37, 38, 50, 54, 55, 56, 60, and 66. We found that the majority of these 88 strains (81.8%) belonged to Clade 2 with significantly high homogeneity from Shanghai. However, in the Urumqi area, some strains were grouped to Clade 5, and some could not be attributed to any of the established VZV clades, although the majority of Urumqi strains belonged to Clade 2. Our results illustrated that due to geographical location, VZV could undergo genetic recombination, suggesting that VZV diversity is more complicated in certain areas and geographical separation contributes to VZV complexity.