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Detection of West Nile virus lineage 2 in the urine of acute human infections
Author(s) -
Papa Anna,
Testa Theodolinda,
Papadopoulou Elpida
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of medical virology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.782
H-Index - 121
eISSN - 1096-9071
pISSN - 0146-6615
DOI - 10.1002/jmv.23949
Subject(s) - virology , west nile virus , serology , outbreak , urine , virus , biology , isolation (microbiology) , antibody , zika virus , medicine , immunology , microbiology and biotechnology
West Nile virus (WNV) lineage 2 emerged in Greece in 2010 and since then outbreaks in humans have been reported for four consecutive years. Laboratory diagnosis is based mainly on serology. A real‐time RT‐PCR was applied on urine samples obtained from 35 patients with acute WNV infection. WNV RNA was detected in 40% of the samples with cycle threshold (CT) values ranging from 26.95 to 39.89 (mean 33.11). WNV was isolated from two of four urine samples with low CT (<30). Viral load was not associated with patients' age, sex, day of illness, presence of WNV antibodies, and neurological symptoms. However, it seems that sample shipment and storage conditions are very important for virus detection and isolation. The usefulness of the WNV RNA detection in urine as a diagnostic tool of acute WNV infections is discussed. J. Med. Virol. 86:2142–2145, 2014 . © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.