Phylogeography Analysis Reveals Rabies Epidemiology, Evolution, and Transmission in the Philippines.

ABSTRACT: Rabies, caused by rabies virus, is a severe public health problem in the Philippines, where animal rabies epidemiology had been extensively investigated, but little is known about the national epidemiologic situations since 2010. Here, we report a 12-year nationwide animal rabies surveillance with systematic phylogenetic analysis, in which 353 whole genomes of rabies viruses collected from animal rabies cases between 2018 and 2022 were obtained. The phylogenetic and spatial-temporal evolutionary analyses showed that rabies viruses in the Philippines were exclusively classified into the SEA4 subclade within the Asian clade, but forming three major geographically specific lineages. Intra-island spread predominates the rabies transmission in three major island regions, while the inter-island

SUBMITTER: Zhang L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11815495 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature