A molecular epidemiological study of rabies in Cuba

Abstract

To investigate the emergence and current situation of terrestrial rabies in Cuba, a collection of rabies virus specimens was employed for genetic characterization. These data supported the monophyletic nature of all terrestrial rabies viruses presently circulating in Cuba but additionally delineated several distinct variants exhibiting limited spatial distribution which may reflect the history of rabies spread on the island. The strain of rabies currently circulating in Cuba, which emerged on the island in the early 20th century, has very close evolutionary ties to the Mexican dog type and is a member of the cosmopolitan lineage widely distributed during the colonial period. The Cuban rabies viruses, which circulate predominantly within the mongoose population, are phylogenetically distant from viruses circulating in mongooses in other parts of the world. These studies illustrate, at a global level, the adaptation of multiple strains of rabies to mongoose species which should be regarded as important wildlife hosts for rabies re-emergence. Given the recent emergence of human cases due to bat contact in Cuba, this study also included a single insectivorous bat specimen which was found to most closely resemble the rabies viruses known to circulate in Mexican vampire bats.

Oral Vaccination of Captive Small Indian Mongoose (Herpestes auropunctatus) against Rabies

“…However, the species has been identified as a rabies reservoir on some of the Caribbean islands, including Cuba, The Dominican Republic, Grenada, and Puerto Rico, since the mid-20th century (Everard and Everard, 1992). Mongoose rabies on the islands is a result of independent spillover infections from rabid dogs (Nadin-Davis et al, 2006). Attempts to control mongoose rabies through culling had only a transient effect (Everard and Everard, 1992).…”

Risk Modeling of Bat Rabies in the Caribbean Islands

“…The validation model ( Figure 3) determined Cuba (6.17) and the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti (6.08) as the highest risk, followed by Trinidad and Tobago (5.24), and Grenada (5.31). All these islands have documented occurrences of laboratory confirmed rabid bats [4,[12][13][14][15]. Risk values attained from the validation model for each of the Caribbean countries where bat rabies has been detected are displayed in Table 3 .…”

“…In Cuba, an insectivorous species of bat, Eumops glaucinus (Wagner's Bonneted bat), was found to be infected with a rabies virus that is closely related to a clade of previously characterized rabies viruses circulating within hematophagous bats in Mexico [12]. Findings such as this support the concern that over-water movements of Caribbean bat species does indeed occur, and furthermore it is likely that these movements may occur periodically during the lifetime of certain bat species, representing a continuous potential for the spread of bat-associated rabies virus.…”

Feral Cats

“…Seroprevalence in mongooses ranges from 11.7% up to 40% on some islands (Zieger et al 2014;Berentsen et al 2015), and in Puerto Rico, 70% of animals testing positive for rabies virus in 2013 were mongooses (Dyer et al 2014). Rabies virus strains from Grenada (Zieger et al 2014), Cuba (Nadin- Davis et al 2006), and Puerto Rico (Nadin-Davis et al 2008) suggest independent introduction of rabies to different Caribbean islands. No oral rabies vaccination program exists for mongooses, although research into potential oral rabies vaccine baits in the Caribbean has been conducted (Linhart et al 1993;Creekmore et al 1994;Berentsen et al 2014).…”