Rabies virus in a pregnant naturally infected southern yellow bat (Lasiurus ega)

Abstract

Current knowledge on bat lyssavirus infections in their native hosts is limited and little is known about the virulence, virus dissemination and transmission among free-living insectivorous bats. The present study is a brief description of rabies virus (RABV) dissemination in tissues of a naturally infected pregnant southern yellow bat (Lasiurus ega) and its fetuses, obtained by reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The RT-PCR was positive in samples from the brain, salivary gland, tongue, lungs, heart, kidneys and liver. On the other hand, the placenta, three fetuses, spleen, intestine and brown fat tissue tested negative. This research demonstrated the absence of rabies virus in the fetuses, thus, in this specific case, the transplacentary transmission was not observed.

The effect of Rabies Infection and Vaccination on Pregnancy in Rats as Animal Model

“…Reports of prenatal infection by rabies virus usually follow experimental infection of dam where by unnatural large inoculums may enter circulatory system (Constantine, 1986). However the possible routes of RABV transmission among bats has include aerosol transmission, ingestion of virus-infected milk from an infected dam and transplacental infection (Smith et al, 1963;Constantine et al, 1968a ;Allendorf et al, 2011). It was suggested that occurrence of rabies in calves less than one year of age may be due to insufficient colostral immunity or because the animals had not received a rabies vaccine or the appropriate booster (Lemos et al, 2001;Mori et al, 2004;Lima et al, 2005).…”