A novel tick-borne bunyavirus (Huaiyangshan virus, HYSV), which causes haemorrhagic fever-like disease, has recently been reported in China. So far no animal experiments have been performed to study its pathogenesis. Towards developing an animal model for HYSV fever, newborn and adult mice and rats and golden hamsters were inoculated intracerebrally or intraperitoneally with HYSV. Newborn rats and newborn mice, especially Kunming (KM) mice, appeared highly susceptible. Remarkably, the KM mice that died of the HYSV infection developed large necrotic areas in the liver, while no obvious pathological changes were observed within the other organs. PCR and immunohistochemical analyses of the post-mortem material detected both HYSV antigen and RNA in almost all organs, indicating a systemic infection. Our data demonstrate that HYSV can cause a lethal infection of both newborn mice and newborn rats with apparent pathological damage of the liver. This animal model may help to understand the pathogenesis of the HYSV infection in humans.Viruses of the family Bunyaviridae, which are geographically distributed worldwide, can be classed into five genera: Orthobunyavirus, Hantavirus, Phlebovirus, Nairovirus and Tospovirus (Nichol, 2001;. With the exception of hantaviruses which are hosted and transmitted by mammals (rodents and insectivores) (Jonsson et al., 2010;, all four other genera of viruses are transmitted by arthropods, such as mosquitoes, ticks, sand flies, or thrips (Nichol, 2001;. Among the known viruses, viruses from genera Orthobunyavirus, Hantavirus, Phlebovirus and Nairovirus, can cause human disease, varying from inapparent or mild febrile disease (orthobunyaviruses) to fatal encephalitis, haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (hantaviruses), a selflimiting influenza-like illness (mostly) to haemorrhagic fever (rarely) (phleboviruses) and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) (nairoviruses) (Nichol, 2001;.In 2009 and 2010, a haemorrhagic fever-like disease with 15 % mortality emerged in the neighbouring mountain areas of Henan and Hubei provinces, which are located in the central part of China Zhang et al., 2011Zhang et al., , 2012. The illness was characterized by fever, severe malaise, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, with haemorrhagic complications in some cases (Zhang et al., , 2012. Yu et al. (2011) reported the disease as severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome and the virus as severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus. As thrombocytopenia is a major feature in nearly all haemorrhagic fever diseases caused by viruses or even by other pathogens such as Rickettsia spp. and Anaplasma phagocytophilum (Sanchez et al., 2004;Srikiatkhachorn et al., 2010;Zhang et al., 2008), we proposed to name the syndrome as Huaiyangshan haemorrhagic fever (HYSHF) and the virus as Huaiyangshan virus (HYSV) according to the geographical origin of the initially reported patients . In 2010, the disease was also found in nine other provinces. In 2011, more than 500 HYSHF cases from th...

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BackgroundCoagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS) are recognized as a large reservoir of staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) harboured by Staphylococcus aureus. However, data of SCCmec in CoNS are relatively absent particularly in China.MethodsSeventy-eight CoNS clinical and 47 community isolates were collected in Beijing. PCR was performed to classify SCCmec types. Under oxacillin treatment, quantitative real-time reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR) was performed to compare mecA mRNA levels and mRNA half-life between isolates with single SCCmec element and those with multiple one. Their growth curves were analysed. Their bacterial cell wall integrity was also compared by performing a Gram stain. All ccr complex segments were sequenced and obtained ccr segments were analysed by phylogenetic analyses.ResultsAll 78 clinical isolates had mecA segments compared with 38% in community isolates (total 47). Only 29% clinical isolates and 33% community isolates (among mecA positive isolates) harboured a single previously identified SCCmec type; notably, 17% clinical isolates and 28% community isolates had multiple SCCmec types. Further studies indicated that isolates with multiple SCCmec elements had more stable mecA mRNA expression compared with isolates with single SCCmec elements. CoNS with multiple SCCmec elements demonstrated superior cell wall integrity. Interestingly, phylogenetic analyses of obtained 70 ccr segments indicated that horizontal gene transfer of the ccr complex might exist among various species of clinical CoNS, community CoNS and S. aureus.ConclusionsCoNS recovered from patients carried extremely diverse but distinctive SCCmec elements compared with isolates from the community. More attention should be given to CoNS with multiple SCCmec not only because they had superior cell wall integrity, but also because CoNS and S. aureus might acquire multiple SCCmec through the ccr complex.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12941-017-0231-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Wolbachia 16S rRNA and fbpA genes were twice detected over 5 days in the blood of a patient with high fever. The patient was given fluoroquinolones and the fever resolved. Four weeks later, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and received R-CHOP (Rituximab, Cyclophosphamide, Doxorubicin, Vincristine, Prednisolone) treatment resulting in complete remission. This is the first report of detection of Wolbachia genes from the blood of human patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.