Surveillance for Ebola Virus in Wildlife, Thailand

Wacharapluesadee, Supaporn; Olival, Kevin J.; Kanchanasaka, Budsabong; Duengkae, Prateep; Kaewchot, Supakarn; Srongmongkol, Phimchanok; Ieamsaard, Gittiyaporn; Maneeorn, Patarapol; Sittidetboripat, Nuntaporn; Kaewpom, Thongchai; Petcharat, Sininat; Yingsakmongkon, Sangchai; Rollin, Pierre E.; Towner, Jonathan S.; Hemachudha, Thiravat

doi:10.3201/eid2112.150860

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…A recent study reports the negative results of a large survey testing 500 individuals of Pteropus lylei for ebolavirus across 10 roosting sites in Thailand. This study was designed with enough statistical power to detect ebolavirus prevalence as low as 6% [ 43 ]. Our model ranked this particular fruit bat species behind 195 other bat species in its probability of filovirus-seropositivity.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Undiscovered Bat Hosts of Filoviruses

et al. 2016

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Ebola and other filoviruses pose significant public health and conservation threats by causing high mortality in primates, including humans. Preventing future outbreaks of ebolavirus depends on identifying wildlife reservoirs, but extraordinarily high biodiversity of potential hosts in temporally dynamic environments of equatorial Africa contributes to sporadic, unpredictable outbreaks that have hampered efforts to identify wild reservoirs for nearly 40 years. Using a machine learning algorithm, generalized boosted regression, we characterize potential filovirus-positive bat species with estimated 87% accuracy. Our model produces two specific outputs with immediate utility for guiding filovirus surveillance in the wild. First, we report a profile of intrinsic traits that discriminates hosts from non-hosts, providing a biological caricature of a filovirus-positive bat species. This profile emphasizes traits describing adult and neonate body sizes and rates of reproductive fitness, as well as species’ geographic range overlap with regions of high mammalian diversity. Second, we identify several bat species ranked most likely to be filovirus-positive on the basis of intrinsic trait similarity with known filovirus-positive bats. New bat species predicted to be positive for filoviruses are widely distributed outside of equatorial Africa, with a majority of species overlapping in Southeast Asia. Taken together, these results spotlight several potential host species and geographical regions as high-probability targets for future filovirus surveillance.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Undiscovered Bat Hosts of Filoviruses

et al. 2016

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“…P. lylei (Lyle’s flying fox (LFF)) ranges from Yunnan in China, and extends to Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam [ 23 ]. Up to 20 colonies have been identified in Thailand [ 24 ] and the largest known colony comprises of about 10,000 individuals [ 22 ]. It shares foraging areas with other frugivorous bats in fruit trees, from which the fruits are also shared by humans.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longitudinal study of age-specific pattern of coronavirus infection in Lyle’s flying fox (Pteropus lylei) in Thailand

Wacharapluesadee

Duengkae

Chaiyes

et al. 2018

Virol J

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BackgroundBats are natural reservoirs for several highly pathogenic and novel viruses including coronaviruses (CoVs) (mainly Alphacoronavirus and Betacoronavirus). Lyle’s flying fox (Pteropus lylei)‘s roosts and foraging sites are usually in the proximity to humans and animals. Knowledge about age-specific pattern of CoV infection in P. lylei, prevalence, and viral shedding at roosts and foraging sites may have an impact on infection-age-structure model to control CoV outbreak.MethodsP. lylei bats were captured monthly during January–December 2012 for detection of CoV at three areas in Chonburi province; two human dwellings, S1 and S2, where few fruit trees were located with an open pig farm, 0.6 km and 5.5 km away from the bat roost, S3. Nested RT-PCR of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) gene from rectal swabs was used for CoV detection. The strain of CoV was confirmed by sequencing and phylogenetic analysis.ResultsCoV infection was found in both juveniles and adult bats between May and October (January, in adults only and April, in juveniles only). Of total rectal swab positives (68/367, 18.5%), ratio was higher in bats captured at S1 (11/44, 25.0%) and S2 (35/99, 35.4%) foraging sites than at roost (S3) (22/224, 9.8%). Juveniles (forearm length ≤ 136 mm) were found with more CoV infection than adults at all three sites; S1 (9/24, 37.5% vs 2/20, 10%), S2 (22/49, 44.9% vs 13/50, 26.0%), and S3 (10/30, 33.3% vs 12/194, 6.2%). The average BCI of CoV infected bats was significantly lower than uninfected bats. No gender difference related to infection was found at the sites. Phylogenetic analysis of conserved RdRp gene revealed that the detected CoVs belonged to group D betacoronavirus (n = 64) and alphacoronavirus (n = 4).ConclusionsThe fact that CoV infection and shedding was found in more juvenile than adult bats may suggest transmission from mother during peripartum period. Whether viral reactivation during parturition period or stress is responsible in maintaining transmission in the bat colony needs to be explored.

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“…There have been frequent outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases caused by viruses of animal origin, such as the emergence of the Ebola virus in West Africa and the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus in the Middle East 1 , 2 . Investigations of the source of these novel viral infections have highlighted wildlife as a reservoir of zoonotic viruses 3 , 4 . Marmota himalayana is a species endemic to the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau that belongs to the family Sciuridae in the order Rodentia.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marmota himalayana in the Qinghai–Tibetan plateau as a special host for bi-segmented and unsegmented picobirnaviruses

Luo

Jin

et al. 2018

Emerging Microbes & Infections

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Wildlife has been considered the main source of novel viruses causing emerging infectious diseases. Marmota himalayana is endemic to the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, China. Here, based on a high-throughput method using Illumina RNA sequencing, we studied the RNA virome of M. himalayana and discovered multiple novel viruses, especially picobirnaviruses (PBVs), which have a bi-segmented genome and belong to the family Picobirnaviridae. A total of 63% of the viral contigs corresponded to PBVs, comprising 274 segment 1 and 56 segment 2 sequences. Unexpectedly, four unsegmented PBV genomes were also detected and confirmed by PCR and resequencing. According to the phylogenetic analysis, the following nine PBV assortment types are proposed: C1:GI, C2:GIV, C4:GI, C4:GV, C5:GI, C7:GI, C8:GIV, C8:GV and C8:GII. We hypothesize a model of segmentation for the PBV genome, mediated by a 6-bp direct repeat sequence, GAAAGG. The model is supported by detection of the segmentation-associated sequence GAAAGG not only in the 5′ untranslated regions of segment 1 (221 in 289) and segment 2 (57 in 80) of bi-segmented PBVs but also in the 5′ untranslated regions and junction sequences between the capsid and RdRp genes of unsegmented PBVs. Therefore, with RNA sequencing, we found an unexpected biodiversity of PBVs in M. himalayana, indicating that M. himalayana is a special host for PBVs. We also proposed a putative model of how bi-segmented PBVs could be converted into unsegmented PBVs, which sheds new light on the processes of RNA virus genome evolution.

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Surveillance for Ebola Virus in Wildlife, Thailand

Cited by 8 publications

References 10 publications

Undiscovered Bat Hosts of Filoviruses

Undiscovered Bat Hosts of Filoviruses

Longitudinal study of age-specific pattern of coronavirus infection in Lyle’s flying fox (Pteropus lylei) in Thailand

Marmota himalayana in the Qinghai–Tibetan plateau as a special host for bi-segmented and unsegmented picobirnaviruses

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