Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Schatz, Juliane
• Freuling, Conrad Martin
• Auer, Ernst
• Goharriz, Hooman
• Harbusch, Christine
• Johnson, Nicholas
• Kaipf, Ingrid
• Mettenleiter, Thomas Christoph
• Mühldorfer, Kristin
• Mühle, Ralf-Udo
• Ohlendorf, Bernd
• Pott-Dörfer, Bärbel
• Prüger, Julia
• Ali, Hanan Sheikh
• Stiefel, Dagmar
• Teubner, Jens
• Ulrich, Rainer Günter
• Wibbelt, Gudrun
• Müller, Thomas
• Rupprecht, Charles E.

Titel

Enhanced passive bat rabies surveillance in indigenous bat species from Germany--a retrospective study

Ist Teil von

• PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 2014-05, Vol.8 (5), p.e2835-e2835

Ort / Verlag

United States: Public Library of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In Germany, rabies in bats is a notifiable zoonotic disease, which is caused by European bat lyssaviruses type 1 and 2 (EBLV-1 and 2), and the recently discovered new lyssavirus species Bokeloh bat lyssavirus (BBLV). As the understanding of bat rabies in insectivorous bat species is limited, in addition to routine bat rabies diagnosis, an enhanced passive surveillance study, i.e. the retrospective investigation of dead bats that had not been tested for rabies, was initiated in 1998 to study the distribution, abundance and epidemiology of lyssavirus infections in bats from Germany. A total number of 5478 individuals representing 21 bat species within two families were included in this study. The Noctule bat (Nyctalus noctula) and the Common pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) represented the most specimens submitted. Of all investigated bats, 1.17% tested positive for lyssaviruses using the fluorescent antibody test (FAT). The vast majority of positive cases was identified as EBLV-1, predominately associated with the Serotine bat (Eptesicus serotinus). However, rabies cases in other species, i.e. Nathusius' pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus nathusii), P. pipistrellus and Brown long-eared bat (Plecotus auritus) were also characterized as EBLV-1. In contrast, EBLV-2 was isolated from three Daubenton's bats (Myotis daubentonii). These three cases contribute significantly to the understanding of EBLV-2 infections in Germany as only one case had been reported prior to this study. This enhanced passive surveillance indicated that besides known reservoir species, further bat species are affected by lyssavirus infections. Given the increasing diversity of lyssaviruses and bats as reservoir host species worldwide, lyssavirus positive specimens, i.e. both bat and virus need to be confirmed by molecular techniques.