Zoonotic vaccinia virus infection in Brazil: clinical description and implications for health professionals

Abstract

Bovine vaccinia virus outbreaks have been occurring in different regions of Brazil. We report here the time course of natural human infection by vaccinia virus and describe important clinical and epidemiological aspects of this zoonotic infection. The diagnosis of vaccinia virus infection was based on clinical, serological, and molecular procedures.

FIG. 1.

(A and B) Typical ulcerative lesions on a milker's fingers and hands. (C and D) AFM height images ranging from 6 to 2 μm. Viral particles were imaged in air with multimode equipment and a NanoScope IIIa controller (Digital Instruments, Santa Barbara, CA). Tapping mode imaging was performed in air by using silicon cantilevers from Nanosensors.

FIG. 2.

Orthopoxvirus phylogenetic analysis (A) and VACV phylogenetic analysis (B) based on the ha gene. The midpoint-rooted condensed trees (cutoff value of 70% from 1,000 bootstrap replicates) were constructed based on ha gene sequences by the neighbor-joining method using the Tamura-Nei model of nucleotide substitution implemented in MEGA3. Brazilian strains of VACV are shown in boldface, and a “⧫” symbol indicates the strains associated with bovine vaccinia virus outbreaks. An asterisk indicates vaccine strains used in Brazil during the smallpox vaccination campaign. Nucleotide sequences were obtained from GenBank with the following accession numbers: MURV (DQ247770); ARAV (AY523994); PSTV (DQ070848); GP1V, Guarani P1 virus (DQ206436); GP2V (DQ206437); VBH, Belo Horizonte virus (DQ206435); CTGV (AF229247); VACV-WR, VACV-Western Reserve (AY243312); VACV-Lister (AY678276); VACV-Malbran (AY146624); VACV-IOC, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (AF229248); VACV-COP, VACV-Copenhagen (M35027); VACV-Wyeth (VVZ99051); BFLVbfl-3906, buffalopox virus (AF375077); RPXV-rev, rabbitpox virus rev (AF375118); ECTV-MOS, ectromelia virus Moscow (AF012825); CPXV-BR, cowpox virus Brighton Red (AF482758); CMLV-M96, camelpox virus M96 (AF438165); VARV-BSH, variola virus Bangladesh (L22579); VARV-Garcia, variola virus minor Garcia-1966 (Y16780); MPXV-ZRE, monkeypox virus Zaire-96-I-16 (AF380138).