Study On The Temporal And Spatial Distribution And Surveillance Of Animal Rabies Pathogen In Yunnan Province

Rabies is a zoonotic disease (a disease that is transmitted to humans from animals) thatis caused by neurotropic viruses of the genus in the family Rhabdoviridae. The diseaseinfects all warm-blooded animals including dogs, cats, pig, sheep, cattle, horse and wildanimals such as wolf, fox, raccoon dog, the skunk, jackals and bats et al, and is spread topeople through close contact with infected animal’s saliva via bites or scratches. Dogs arethe source of the vast majority of human and animal rabies deaths, and foxes or skunks andbats, respectively, act as the most relevant reservoirs and/or vectors.The fatality rate ofRabies is almost100%.To elucidate the the temporal and spatial distribution, the molecular diversity andevolution relationship of rabies viruses in Yunnan military region, brain tissue samples andsaliva swab samples of dogs and calves were collected from the boundary region of Yunnanprovince during2006to2011and screened by RT-PCR, nested PCR and Directimmunofluorescence for rabies pathogeny surveillance. The positive samples of rabies virushad been found in30counties of11different municipalities. The G, N, P, M genes and G-Lintergenic region of rabies viruse from the18representative positive samples were amplifiedby RT-PCR and cloned into pMD18-T vectors for sequencing. The alignment andphylogenetic analysis were performed with sequences of the known reference strains. Theresults showed the virus strains from Yunnan province belonged to Serotype Ⅰ andGenotype Ⅰ, and occurred four genetic lineages or sub-lineages (China Ⅰ-1, China Ⅰ-2,China Ⅰ-3, and Thailand). The phylogenic analysis results between G gene and G-Lintergenic region were different in three samples, YNYL2010, YNQJ07, and YNRL022011.YNYL2010, YNQJ07, YNRL022011were belonged to lineage or sub-lineage China Ⅰ-1,China Ⅰ-2, Thailand in G gene analysis, but belonged to China Ⅰ-2, China Ⅰ-3, China Ⅰ-1in G-L intergenic region analysis respectively. The results indicated that the G geneand G-L intergenic region of rabies virus in Yunnan province had occurred geneticdiversities, and the viruses may have different origin even in the same lineage orsub-lineage. The viruses of genetic sub-lineages China Ⅰ-1become dominant epidemicstrains in Yunnan military region.