A comparison of viral fitness and virulence between emergent adenovirus 14p1 and prototype adenovirus 14p strains

These data suggest that the increase in morbidity and mortality observed in recent HAdV-14p1 infections is not due to viral growth or cellular infectivity differences from the prototypic HAdV-14 strain. While there were some statistically important differences detected between strains in cytotoxicity and plaque morphology assays, it seems more likely that other factors, such as environmental stressors, co-infections, or individual host response are likely contributing to the increase in morbidity.