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A Variegated Squirrel Bornavirus Associated with Fatal Human Encephalitis.
N Engl J Med. 2015 Jul 9;373(2):154-62
Authors: Hoffmann B, Tappe D, Höper D, Herden C, Boldt A, Mawrin C, Niederstraßer O, Müller T, Jenckel M, van der Grinten E, Lutter C, Abendroth B, Teifke JP, Cadar D, Schmidt-Chanasit J, Ulrich RG, Beer M
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.).
PMID: 26154788 [PubMed - in process]