Cocirculation of 2 genotypes of Toscana virus, southeastern France

Abstract

Toscana virus (TOSV), an arthropodborne phlebovirus transmitted by sandflies, can cause febrile illness and meningitis. The vector of TOSV in France was unknown. We detected TOSV RNA in 2 (female Phlebotomus perniciosus) of 61 pools of sandflies captured in southeastern France. Two genotypes of TOSV were identified.

Figure 1

CDC light traps, adapted for sandfly trapping, placed in horse stables (A), near rabbit hutches and henhouses (B), and in quiet places in the shade of human habitations, where dogs sleep (C). Engorged female Phlebotomus perniciosus sandfly trapped in a horse stable (D); spermatheca of Ph. perniciosus female after dissection (E); genitalia of Ph. perniciosus male after dissection (F).

Figure 2

Phylogenetic trees based on nucleotide (A) and amino acid (B) sequences in the nucleoprotein gene of phleboviruses within the species Sandfly fever Naples virus. Sequence information corresponds to virus/country of origin/strain/GenBank accession no/host. Sequences representing French TOSV are in boldface. Sequences determined in this study are underlined. Sequence alignment was achieved with ClustalX 1.81 with sequences from other phleboviruses retrieved from GenBank. Accession numbers of GenBank sequences used for genetic analyses are indicated. Phylogenetic studies were conducted by using MEGA version 3.0 (11). Genetic distances were calculated with the pairwise distance and Jukes-Cantor methods at the nucleotide and amino acid level, respectively. Phylogenetic trees were constructed with the neighbor-joining method. The robustness of the nodes was tested by 500 bootstrap replications.