Molecular epidemiology of human Borna disease virus 1 infection revisited

• Published in: Emerging Microbes and Infections
• Main Authors: Liv Bode, Yujie Guo, Peng Xie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2022-12-01
• Subjects: Borna disease virus 1; BoDV-1; human complete BoDV-1 genomes; human and shrew amino acid BoDV-1 mutations; epidemiological concepts
• Online Access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/22221751.2022.2065931

Borna disease virus 1 (BoDV-1) strains attracted public interest by recently reported rare fatal encephalitis cases in Germany. Previously, human BoDV-1 infection was suggested to contribute to psychiatric diseases. Clinical outcomes (encephalitis vs. psychiatric disease) and epidemiology (zoonotic vs. human-to-human transmission) are still controversial. Here, phylogenetic analyses of 18 human and 4 laboratory strains revealed close genomic homologies both in distant geographical regions, and different clinical entities. Single unique amino acid mutations substantiated the authenticity of human strains. No matching was found with those of shrew strains in the same cluster 4, arguing against zoonosis. Opposite epidemiology concepts should be equally considered.