Phocine Distemper Virus in Seals, East Coast, United States, 2006

Overview

Journal Emerg Infect Dis

Specialty Infectious Diseases

Date 2011 Feb 5

PMID 21291591

Citations 14

Authors

J A Philip Earle

Mary M Melia

Nadine V Doherty

Ole Nielsen

S Louise Cosby

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

In 2006 and 2007, elevated numbers of deaths among seals, constituting an unusual mortality event, occurred off the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts, United States. We isolated a virus from seal tissue and confirmed it as phocine distemper virus (PDV). We compared the viral hemagglutinin, phosphoprotein, and fusion (F) and matrix (M) protein gene sequences with those of viruses from the 1988 and 2002 PDV epizootics. The virus showed highest similarity with a PDV 1988 Netherlands virus, which raises the possibility that the 2006 isolate from the United States might have emerged independently from 2002 PDVs and that multiple lineages of PDV might be circulating among enzootically infected North American seals. Evidence from comparison of sequences derived from different tissues suggested that mutations in the F and M genes occur in brain tissue that are not present in lung, liver, or blood, which suggests virus persistence in the central nervous system.

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