European Bat Lyssaviruses, the Netherlands

摘要

To study European bat lyssavirus (EBLV) in bat reser-voirs in the Netherlands, native bats have been tested forrabies since 1984. For all collected bats, data includingspecies, age, sex, and date and location found wererecorded. A total of 1,219 serotine bats, Eptesicus seroti-nus, were tested, and 251 (21%) were positive forlyssavirus antigen. Five (4%) of 129 specimens from thepond bat, Myotis dasycneme, were positive. Recentlydetected EBLV RNA segments encoding the nucleoproteinwere sequenced and analyzed phylogenetically (45 speci-mens). All recent serotine bat specimens clustered withgenotype 5 (EBLV1) sequences, and homologies withinsubgenotypes EBLV1a and EBLV1b were 99.0%–100%and 99.2%–100%, respectively. Our findings indicate thatEBLVs of genotype 5 are endemic in the serotine bat in theNetherlands. Since EBLVs can cause fatal infections inhumans, all serotine and pond bats involved in contact inci-dents should be tested to determine whether the victim wasexposed to EBLVs