Human adenoviruses (HAdV), which comprise 70 types classified into seven species (A–G), are common pathogens causing respiratory, gastrointestinal, genitourinary and ocular diseases 1. However, co-circulation of other HAdV types as well as better reporting may have contributed to the huge increase of reported cases. In conclusion, molecular phylogeny of complete genomic sequences proved a monophyletic HAdV-D8 epidemic. Circulation of the epidemic strain was detected as early as 2010 but not after the epidemic period in 2014. A single outlier was closely related to HAdV-D8 strains isolated prior to the epidemic period. HAdV-D8 isolates of the epidemic period had a very high sequence identity of at least 99.9% and formed a monophyletic cluster with two subclusters. For comparison, eight HAdV-D8 isolates from outside the epidemic period were sequenced. In order to investigate whether a novel monophyletic HAdV-D8 strain prevailed during the epidemic period, complete genomic sequences of 23 HAdV-D8 isolates were generated by deep sequencing and analyzed phylogenetically. From November 2011 until December 2013 (epidemic period) 85% of typed isolates were human adenovirus type 8 (HAdV-D8), whereas only low level circulation (19%) of HAdV-D8 was observed outside the epidemic period. The German infectious disease surveillance system revealed an increase of epidemic keratoconjunctivitis (EKC) from an average of 320 cases/year (2001 to 2010) up to 21 cases in 20, respectively.

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