Abstract
Two different West Nile virus (WNV) strains caused lethal encephalitis in a flock of geese and a goshawk in southeastern Hungary in 2003 and 2004, respectively. During the outbreak in geese, 14 confirmed human cases of WNV encephalitis and meningitis were reported in the same area. Sequencing of complete genomes of both WNV strains and phylogenetic analyses showed that the goose-derived strain exhibits closest genetic relationship to strains isolated in 1998 in Israel and to the strain that emerged in 1999 in the United States. WNV derived from the goshawk showed the highest identity to WNV strains of lineage 2 isolated in central Africa. The same strain reemerged in 2005 in the same location, which suggests that the virus may have overwintered in Europe. The emergence of an exotic WNV strain in Hungary emphasizes the role of migrating birds in introducing new viruses to Europe.
Highlights
Two different West Nile virus (WNV) strains caused lethal encephalitis in a flock of geese and a goshawk in southeastern Hungary in 2003 and 2004, respectively
Materials and Methods Brain specimens from one 6-week-old goose, which died during the encephalitis outbreak in a Hungarian goose flock, and brain samples from a goshawk, which died from encephalitis, were used for WNV nucleic acid determination
A universal Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV)-group specific oligonucleotide primer pair designed on the nonstructural protein 5 (NS5) and 3′-untranslated regions (UTR) of WNV was applied on the RNA extracts in a continuous reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) system employing the QIAGEN OneStep RT-PCR Kit (Qiagen)
Summary
Two different West Nile virus (WNV) strains caused lethal encephalitis in a flock of geese and a goshawk in southeastern Hungary in 2003 and 2004, respectively. In addition to the 2 major WNV lineages, we recently proposed 2 lineages for viruses that exhibited considerable genetic differences to the known WNV lineages: lineage 3 consists of a virus strain isolated from Culex pipiens mosquitoes at the Czech Republic/Austria border (named Rabensburg virus), and lineage 4 consists of a unique virus isolated in the Caucasus. These 2 viruses, may be considered independent flaviviruses within the JEV complex [18]. And geographically related to the outbreak in geese, a serologically confirmed WNV outbreak was observed in humans, which involved 14 cases of mild encephalitis and meningitis [20]
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