SARS-CoV infection in a restaurant from palm civet

Abstract

Epidemiologic investigations showed that 2 of 4 patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) identified in the winter of 2003-2004 were a waitresss at a restaurant in Guangzhou, China, that served palm civets as food and a customer who ate in the restaurant ashort distance from animal cages. All 6 palm civets at the restaurant were positive for SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV). Partial spike (S) gene sequences of SARS-CoV from the 2 patients were identical to 4 of 5 Sgene viral sequences from palm civets. Phylogenetic analysis showed that SARS-CoV from palm civets in the restaurant was most closely related to animal isolates. SARS cases at the restaurant were the result of recent interspecies transfer from the putative palm civet reservoir, and not the result of continued circulation of SARS-CoV in the human population.

Figure

Phylogenetic relationships of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus isolates based on the spike gene. The neighbor-joining tree was constructed by the neighbor-joining process with 1,000 bootstrap replicates. The origins of the sequences are as follows: Civet007, Civet010, Civet019, Civet020, and Civet014, palm civets from the restaurant; GD03T0013, the first SARS patient in 2004; SZ3 and SZ16, palm civets from a Shenzhen market in 2003; GZ60, HGZ8L1-A, ZS-A, ZS-B, ZS-C, and GD01, early phase isolates in 2003 without the 29-nucleotide (nt) deletion; GZ02, HSZ-Bb, HSZ-Bc, HSZ-Cb, and HSZ-Cc, early phase isolates from the 2003 epidemic with an 82-nt deletion; GZ50, HKU-36871, HKU-39849, HKU-65806, CUHK-W1, CUHK-Su10, BJ01, BJ03, Fra, Tor2, and Urbani, middle and late phase isolates from the 2003 epidemic.