A Variegated Squirrel Bornavirus Associated with Fatal Human Encephalitis.

Hoffmann, Bernd; Tappe, Dennis; Höper, Dirk; Herden, Christiane; Boldt, Annemarie; Mawrin, Christian; Niederstraßer, Olaf; Müller, Tobias et al. · N Engl J Med · 2015

case_report · Level V

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Abstract

Between 2011 and 2013, three breeders of variegated squirrels (Sciurus variegatoides) had encephalitis with similar clinical signs and died 2 to 4 months after onset of the clinical symptoms. With the use of a metagenomic approach that incorporated next-generation sequencing and real-time reverse-transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), the presence of a previously unknown bornavirus was detected in a contact squirrel and in brain samples from the three patients. Phylogenetic analyses showed that this virus, tentatively named variegated squirrel 1 bornavirus (VSBV-1), forms a lineage separate from that of the known bornavirus species. (Funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture [Germany] and others.).

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