Abstract
Japanese encephalitis (JE) is a global public health issue that has spread widely to more than 20 countries in Asia and has extended its geographic range to the south Pacific region including Australia. JE has become the most important cause of viral encephalitis in the world. Japanese encephalitis viruses (JEV) are divided into five genotypes, based on the nucleotide sequence of the envelope (E) gene. The Muar strain, isolated from patient in Malaya in 1952, is the sole example of genotype V JEV. Here, the XZ0934 strain of JEV was isolated from Culex tritaeniorhynchus, collected in China. The complete nucleotide and amino acid sequence of XZ0934 strain have been determined. The nucleotide divergence ranged from 20.3% to 21.4% and amino acid divergence ranged from 8.4% to 10.0% when compared with the 62 known JEV isolates that belong to genotype I–IV. It reveals low similarity between XZ0934 and genotype I–IV JEVs. Phylogenetic analysis using both complete genome and structural gene nucleotide sequences demonstrates that XZ0934 belongs to genotype V. This, in turn, suggests that genotype V JEV is emerging in JEV endemic areas. Thus, increased surveillance and diagnosis of viral encephalitis caused by genotype V JEV is an issue of great concern to nations in which JEV is endemic.
Highlights
Japanese encephalitis (JE), which is caused by JE virus (JEV), is one of the most important viral encephalitis in the world [1,2,3,4]
No genotype V JEV has been detected in the world
The JEV strain, XZ0934, was isolated from mosquito samples collected in China in 2009
Summary
Japanese encephalitis (JE), which is caused by JE virus (JEV), is one of the most important viral encephalitis in the world [1,2,3,4]. It is prevalent mostly in Asia including eastern Asia [5,6,7], southern Asia [8] and southeast Asia [9,10]. JEV has a zoonotic transmission cycle between mosquitoes (principally of the genus Culex) and vertebrate hosts such as bats, water birds and pigs [1,4]. 50% of JE patients present severe neurological and mental sequelae such as motor deficits, and cognitive and language impairment [14,15,16]
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