Journal of General Virology (1998), 79, 2603–2614. Printed in Great Britain Isolation and characterization of Puumala hantavirus from Norway: evidence for a distinct phylogenetic sublineage

• Main Authors: A Ke Lundkvist, Donna Wiger, Jan Ho Rling, Katarina Brus Sjo L, Angelina Plyusnina, Reidar Mehl, Antti Vaheri, Er Plyusnin
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Norway; Fennoscandia
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.326.5029; http://jgv.sgmjournals.org/content/79/11/2603.full.pdf

Puumala (PUU) hantavirus is the aetiological agent of nephropathia epidemica (NE), a mild form of haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, which occurs in Fennoscandia, central Europe and Russia. In Norway, NE-like disease has been reported since 1946 and about 50 cases are diagnosed annually; however, the causative agent has not been characterized. In this study, a virus originating from bank voles (Clethrionomys glareolus) trapped near the town of Eidsvoll (Akershus county) was isolated and passaged in laboratory-bred bank voles. The bank vole strain was identified as a PUU virus by serological typing and by sequence analysis of the S and M gene segments. For comparison, complete or partial S sequences were determined for wild-type PUU strains from five locations in Sweden, two inhabited by the southern variant of bank vole present in Fennoscandia, and three by the northern variant. Phylogenetic analysis showed that Norwegian PUU strains are clustered together with Swedish strains from the first group forming a wellsupported sublineage within the PUU genotype, distinct from other sublineages from northern