Abstract

Abstract

Background: Limited or no epidemiological information has been reported for rabies viruses (RABVs) isolated from livestock in the northeastern Brazilian states of Paraíba (PB) and Pernambuco (PE). The aim of this study was to clarify the molecular epidemiology of RABVs circulating in livestock, especially cattle, in these areas between 2003 and 2009.

Findings: Phylogenetic analysis based on 890 nt of the nucleoprotein (N) gene revealed that the 52 livestock-derived RABV isolates characterized here belonged to a single lineage. These isolates clustered with a vampire bat-related RABV lineage previously identified in other states in Brazil; within PB and PE, this lineage was divided between the previously characterized main lineage and a novel sub-lineage.

Conclusions: The occurrences of livestock rabies in PB and PE originated from vampire bat RABVs, and the causative RABV lineage has been circulating in this area of northeastern Brazil for at least 7 years. This distribution pattern may correlate to that of a vampire bat population isolated by geographic barriers.

Details

Title
Molecular epidemiology of livestock rabies viruses isolated in the northeastern Brazilian states of Paraiba and Pernambuco from 2003 - 2009
Author
Mochizuki, Nobuyuki; Kawasaki, Hiroyuki; Silva, Maria LCR; Afonso, José AB; Itou, Takuya; Ito, Fumio H; Sakai, Takeo
Pages
32
Publication year
2012
Publication date
2012
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
17560500
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
923311652
Copyright
© 2012 Mochizuki et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.