Greek measles epidemic strain, 2005-2006

Abstract

The purpose of this work was the molecular study of the virus strain that caused the last measles outbreak in Greece. Twenty-four saliva specimens were obtained from selected patients serologically confirmed as measles cases between December 2005 and March 2006. Measles virus (MV) detection was performed by a nested RT-PCR. The 447-bp segment of the N gene of these MV strains was used for genotyping. The N gene sequences of the Greek MV strains were identical to each other, therefore a phylogenetic tree was constructed using one representative MV (ThesGRE/06). Our data show that the MV strain which caused the 2005-2006 outbreak in Greece belongs to genotype D6, and differs by 0.68% from the New Jersey D6 strain and by 5.5% from the MV vaccine strain Edmonston B (U03656) belonging to genotype A.

Fig

Phylogenetic relationships based on 447-nt region between the Greek measles strain (TheGRE06) and representative measles subtypes recommended by the WHO. The numbers indicate percentage bootstrap replicates (of 100) calculated using swqboot, dnadist, fitch and consense from the phylip package; values below 60% are not shown. Horizontal distances are proportional to the nucleotide differences. The scale bar indicates 10% nucleotide sequence divergence. Vertical distances are for clarity only. The sequence obtained in this study is in bold.