Nephropathia Epidemica: Detection of Antigen in Bank Voles and Serologic Diagnosis of Human Infection

Abstract

An indirect immunofluorescence test for detection of serum antibodies specific for nephropathia epidemica (NE) has been developed with use of acetone-fixed cryostat sections of the lungs of bank voles (Clethrionomys glareolus) that had been trapped from the NE-endemic area in Finland as antigen. NE antigen was detected as distinct fluorescence in the cytoplasm of alveolar and macrophage-like cells. The 16 patients studied included typical cases from an endemic area, cases from a family outbreak, and cases in a laboratory staff which had had close contact with infected bank voles. Antibodies reacting with antigen in the lung sections developed in all of the patients but they were not found in the preimmune sera of the patients, in the sera of patients with other renal diseases, or in the sera of healthy individuals, with the exception of a member of the laboratory staff who had lived in the endemic area for 20 years. No specific IgM antibodies to NE could be detected. The rise in titer of antibodies to NE was characteristically prolonged, and elevated antibody levels persisted for many years.

Molecular Characterization of the Prospect Hill virus M RNA Segment: a Comparison with the M RNA Segments of Other Hantaviruses

“…Hantaan virus (serotype 1) is the aetiological agent of a severe form of HFRS (Lee et al, 1978), SR virus (serotype 2) is linked to a moderate although potentially still fatal form of HFRS (Lee et al, 1982a;Kitamura et al, 1983), and H~illn/is virus (serotype 3) is associated with a milder form, nephropathia epidemica (Brummer-Korvenkontio et al, 1980). In contrast, PH virus (serotype 4) has not been linked to any disease in humans (Yanagihara et al, 1984(Yanagihara et al, , 1987.…”

Survey and case-control study during epidemics of Puumala virus infection

“…Typical symptoms are fever, headache, muscle pain, nausea and impaired renal function [7,8]. The main reservoirs of PUUV are bank voles (Myodes glareolus), which can carry the infection persistently [9][10][11][12]. In Western and Central Europe the bank vole's preferred habitat is broad-leaved oak and beech forests as well as densely mixed forests with abundant herb and undergrowth layers [13].…”

Cloning and sequencing of Puumala virus Sotkamo strain S and M RNA segments: evidence for strain variation in hantaviruses and expression of the nucleocapsid protein

“…The aetiological agent of the mild type HFRS nephropathia epidemica (NE) was first discovered in 1980 from tissue sections of bank voles (Clethrionomys glareolus) from Puumala, Finland (BrumThe sequence data have been deposited in the EMBL Data Library with the accession numbers X61034 and X61035 (for M and S segments, respectively). mer- Korvenkontio et al, 1980), and later a strain from a bank vole in Sotkamo, Finland was adapted to Vero E6 cells (Schmaljohn et al, 1985) and is the prototype strain of Puumala virus (PV) (Brummer-Korvenkontio et al, 1982;Karabatsos, 1985). The taxonomy and nomenclature of hantaviruses has been somewhat controversial but has recently been revised (Calisher, 1990).…”