Global Distribution of Measles Genotypes and Measles Molecular Epidemiology

Abstract

A critical component of laboratory surveillance for measles is the genetic characterization of circulating wild-type viruses. The World Health Organization (WHO) Measles and Rubella Laboratory Network (LabNet), provides for standardized testing in 183 countries and supports genetic characterization of currently circulating strains of measles viruses. The goal of this report is to describe the lessons learned from nearly 20 years of virologic surveillance for measles, to describe the global databases for measles sequences, and to provide regional updates about measles genotypes detected by recent surveillance activities. Virologic surveillance for measles is now well established in all of the WHO regions, and most countries have conducted at least some baseline surveillance. The WHO Global Genotype Database contains >7000 genotype reports, and the Measles Nucleotide Surveillance (MeaNS) contains >4000 entries. This sequence information has proven to be extremely useful for tracking global transmission patterns and for documenting the interruption of transmission in some countries. The future challenges will be to develop quality control programs for molecular methods and to continue to expand virologic surveillance activities in all regions.

Revisiting the genotyping scheme for varicella-zoster viruses based on whole-genome comparisons

“…This was observed for other viruses with widespread vaccination programmes, e.g. measles [8]. Genotyping large numbers of clinical samples with a targeted SNP approach is more practical than NGS for surveillance purposes.…”

Measles outbreak spreading from the community to an anthroposophic school, Berlin, 2011

“…MV variants of genotype D4 have caused outbreaks in Europe since 2007 and D4 became the predominant genotype in Europe in 2011 [4,27]. The MV variant responsible for the outbreak in district X circulated in France during the first and second quarters of 2011 [19].…”

Research priorities for global measles and rubella control and eradication

“…Molecular techniques provide measles virus genotype and genetic sequencing that allow the differentiation and tracking of measles viruses [38]. Genomic data combined with findings from epidemiologic investigations will result in a better understanding of how circulating measles viruses relate in space and time, and will help identify transmission pathways and areas where measles surveillance might be failing to detect cases and chains of virus transmission.…”