Abstract
Bats belong to the order Chiroptera that represents the second largest order of mammals with more than 1200 species and an almost global distribution. Environmental changes and deforestation have severely influenced many ecosystems, intensifying the contact between wildlife and humans. In recent years, bats have been found to harbor a number of different viruses with zoonotic potential, as well as a great diversity of astroviruses, for which the question of zoonotic potential remains unanswered to date. Human astroviruses have been identified as the causative agent for diarrhea in children and immunocompromised patients. For a long time, astroviruses have been considered to be strictly species-specific. However, a great genetic diversity has recently been discovered among animal and human astroviruses that might indicate the potential of these viruses to cross species barriers. Furthermore, our knowledge about the tissue tropism of astroviruses has been expanded to some neurotropic strains that have recently been shown to be responsible for encephalitis in humans and livestock. This review gives an overview on what is known about astroviruses in bats, humans and livestock, especially bovines and pigs. Future research activities are suggested to unravel astrovirus infection dynamics in bat populations to further assess the zoonotic potential of these viruses.
Highlights
Introduction and BackgroundAstroviruses were first discovered in stool samples of infants suffering from diarrhea in 1975 [1].Since our knowledge about the molecular and phenotypic characteristics of these viruses, on the viral pathogenesis and on the spectrum of susceptible hosts has been considerably expanded.Astroviruses belong to the Astroviridae family which is, according to the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), divided into two genera: Mamastrovirus, including 19 species, designatedMamastrovirus 1–19; and Avastrovirus including three species, formerly assigned as turkey, chicken and duck astrovirus
Besides these bat species-specific astrovirus strains reported in this study, there was still a high genetic diversity of astroviruses observed in bats of the same species at the same habitat at one time point, suggesting the circulation of multiple strains within the population, which is in accordance to other studies [11,15,22,23]
To assess and predict the zoonotic potential of bat astroviruses, we need a better understanding of the astrovirus infection dynamics, including the shedding and transmission of viruses between bats and potentially from bats to other mammalian species
Summary
Astroviruses were first discovered in stool samples of infants suffering from diarrhea in 1975 [1]. Bats are frequently considered the reservoir host for a broad variety of newly emerging viruses, especially in the tropics, their general role in the epidemiology and spillover of zoonotic viral diseases is still not fully understood [24,25]. Some of these newly emerged viruses such as corona-, henipa- and filoviruses are zoonotic and show high pathogenic potential in humans [25,26,27,28,29]. This review gives an overview on what is known about astroviruses in bats and their potential to cross species barriers to humans and/or livestock
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