Extract

Background

Hantaviruses belong to the family Bunyaviridae and have a tri-segmented negative-sense single-stranded RNA genome. The virus reservoir was found to be rodents and transmission occurs by aerosol of rodent droppings. The different types of hantavirus have co-evolved with their specific rodent host through evolutionary time spans.

Korean haemorragic fever, that later was found to be caused by a hantavirus infection, attracted attention during, and after, the Korean war (1951–1953), when more than 3000 American and Korean soldiers fell severely ill with an infectious disease characterized by renal failure, generalized haemorrhage and shock with a letality of >10%. The causative agent was first isolated 1976 from the lungs of the striped field mouse Apodemus agrarius, and designated Hantaan virus (HTN) [1,2]. Seroepidemiological studies revealed that HTN virus is only one example of a complex of related viruses that can be found worldwide. An anti-genetically related virus (Seoul) isolated from the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus and Rattus rattus) has been implicated in a milder urban form of haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) [3]. Further studies revealed another antigenetically related virus (Puumala-PUU), which was isolated from the bank vole (Clethrionomys glareolus) [4]. This hantavirus subtype causes nephropathia epidemica (NE) and is the main serotype found in Europe. Historical sources show that an epidemic of `trench nephritis' during World War I may have been hantavirus induced and that during World War II, >10 000 cases of a rodent borne leptospirosis-like disease were noted among German troops in Finnish Lappland [5].

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