Genotypic anomaly in Ebola virus strains circulating in Magazine Wharf area, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2015

Euro Surveill. 2015;20(40):10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2015.20.40.30035. doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2015.20.40.30035.

Abstract

The Magazine Wharf area, Freetown, Sierra Leone was a focus of ongoing Ebola virus transmission from late June 2015. Viral genomes linked to this area contain a series of 13 T to C substitutions in a 150 base pair intergenic region downstream of viral protein 40 open reading frame, similar to the Ebolavirus/H.sapiens-wt/SLE/2014/Makona-J0169 strain (J0169) detected in the same town in November 2014. This suggests that recently circulating viruses from Freetown descend from a J0169-like virus.

Keywords: Ebola virus; surveillance; viral infections.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Disease Outbreaks*
  • Ebolavirus / genetics*
  • Ebolavirus / isolation & purification
  • Genome, Viral
  • Genotype
  • Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / diagnosis
  • Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / epidemiology*
  • Humans
  • Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • Sierra Leone