Bayesian phylogeography of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus in Europe.

ABSTRACT: Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a zoonosis mainly transmitted by ticks that causes severe hemorrhagic fever and has a mortality rate of 5-60%. The first outbreak of CCHF occurred in the Crimean peninsula in 1944-45 and it has recently emerged in the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean. In order to reconstruct the origin and pathway of the worldwide dispersion of the virus at global and regional (eastern European) level, we investigated the phylogeography of the infection by analysing 121 publicly available CCHFV S gene sequences including two recently characterised Albanian isolates. The spatial and temporal phylogeny was reconstructed using a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo approach, which estimated a mean evolutionary rate of 2.96 x 10(-4) (95%HPD=1.6 and 4.7 x 10(-4)) substitu

SUBMITTER: Zehender G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3817137 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature