Bat Rabies in France: A 24-Year Retrospective Epidemiological Study ...

• Main Authors: Picard-Meyer, Evelyne, Robardet, Emmanuelle, Arthur, Laurent, Larcher, Gérald, Harbusch, Christine, Servat, Alexandre, Cliquet, Florence, Forrester, Naomi
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2014
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Myotis nattereri
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13435818; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13435818

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Since bat rabies surveillance was first implemented in France in 1989, 48 autochthonous rabies cases without human contamination have been reported using routine diagnosis methods. In this retrospective study, data on bats submitted for rabies testing were analysed in order to better understand the epidemiology of EBLV-1 in bats in France and to investigate some epidemiological trends. Of the 3176 bats submitted for rabies diagnosis from 1989 to 2013, 1.96% (48/2447 analysed) were diagnosed positive. Among the twelve recognised virus species within the Lyssavirus genus, two species were isolated in France. 47 positive bats were morphologically identified as Eptesicus serotinus and were shown to be infected by both the EBLV-1a and the EBLV-1b lineages. Isolation of BBLV in Myotis nattereri was reported once in the north-east of France in 2012. The phylogenetic characterisation of all 47 French EBLV-1 isolates sampled between 1989 and 2013 and the French BBLV ...