Novel lyssaviruses isolated from bats in Russia. Emerging infectious diseases 9

• Main Authors: R D. Botvinkin, Elena M. Poleschuk, Ivan V. Kuzmin, Tatyana I. Borisova, Suren V. Gazaryan, Pamela Yager
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: Vespertilio murinus; Siberia
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.513.3050; http://zmmu.msu.ru/bats/biblio/l_virus03.pdf

Two new rabies-related viruses were discovered in Russia during 2002. Viruses were isolated from bats in Eastern Siberia near Baikal Lake and in the western Caucasus Mountains. After preliminary antigenic and genetic characterization, we found that both viruses should be considered as new putative lyssavirus genotypes. Rabies is an acute, fatal encephalitis caused bylyssaviruses that are perpetuated in reservoir mam-mals, principally certain carnivores and bats. Although the disease has been known among carnivores, such as dogs, for centuries, the paradigm of rabies in bats has been appreciated fully only over the past 50 years (1–3). Recent findings of bat lyssaviruses throughout the world have prompted a taxonomic reconsideration of the Lyssavirus genus, family Rhabdoviridae. To date, besides their occur-rence in the Americas, Africa, and Australia, at least four additional bat lyssaviruses have been identified in Eurasia (4–7). One of these has been reported from Russia, a “Duvenhage-like ” virus isolated from a patient who died in 1985 after being bitten by a bat at a site near the Urkrainian border (8). We describe the isolation and preliminary iden-tification of two new bat lyssaviruses discovered in Russia. The Study During preliminary infectious disease surveys, bats were obtained randomly at different locations by hand at roosts and from mist netting at cave entrances and at routes of nocturnal foraging. From 1979 to 2002, a total of 210 bats were collected in the Baikal Lake region, including 98 Vespertilio murinus, 3 Myotis brandtii, 55 M. daubentonii