Multiple Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus Strains Are Associated with Disease Outbreaks in Sudan, 2008–2009

Abstract

BackgroundCrimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) activity has recently been detected in the Kordufan region of Sudan. Since 2008, several sporadic cases and nosocomial outbreaks associated with high case-fatality have been reported in villages and rural hospitals in the region.Principal FindingsIn the present study, we describe a cluster of cases occurring in June 2009 in Dunkop village, Abyei District, South Kordufan, Sudan. Seven CCHF cases were involved in the outbreak; however, clinical specimens could be collected from only two patients, both of whom were confirmed as acute CCHF cases using CCHF-specific reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Phylogenetic analysis of the complete S, M, and L segment sequences places the Abyei strain of CCHF virus in Group III, a virus group containing strains from various countries across Africa, including Sudan, South Africa, Mauritania, and Nigeria. The Abyei strain detected in 2009 is genetically distinct from the recently described 2008 Sudanese CCHF virus strains (Al-fulah 3 and 4), and the Abyei strain S and L segments closely match those of CCHF virus strain ArD39554 from Mauritania.ConclusionsThe present investigation illustrates that multiple CCHF virus lineages are circulating in the Kordufan region of Sudan and are associated with recent outbreaks of the disease occurring during 2008–2009.

Epidemiological survey of Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever virus in cattle in East Darfur State, Sudan

“…Therefore, it is suggested that livestock and domestic donkeys play an important role in the epidemiology of the disease. The occurrence of the periodic outbreaks and sporadic cases of CCHF in endemic countries necessitate the importance of improved surveillance system for this important emerging viral pathogen (Altaf et al, 1998;Aradaib et al, 2010Aradaib et al, , 2011Burney et al, 1980;Ahmeti and Raka, 2006;Gurbuz et al, 2009;Khan et al, 1997). In this study, cattle were selected as CCHFV infection appears to occur most frequently in larger mammals, which are the preferred hosts of adult tick vector, Hylomma species (Shepherd et al, 1998).…”

Next-generation sequencing of southern African Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus isolates reveals a high frequency of M segment reassortment

“…However, complete S, M and L sequences are available for only four isolates collected from humans and one tick isolate from South Africa. These, as well as other published CCHFV sequences, were determined by Sanger sequencing using primer walking [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. In recent years, a number of nextgeneration sequencing (NGS) methods have been developed which yield large amounts of sequencing data at relatively low cost.…”

Epidemiology and mutational analysis of global strains of crimean-congo haemorrhagic fever virus

“…Although CCHF has high mortality in humans, the disease primarily occurs in animals. CCHF is endemic in many countries in Africa, Europe and Asia [5,6,15,21,33,37] with outbreaks recently reported in Sudan [3,4] , Kosovo [6,33] , China [12,28,36] , Russia [19,21,37] and India [29] . CCHF is caused by the Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV), a segmented negative strand RNA virus that is a member of the genus Nairovirus of the family Bunyaviridae [16,23] .…”