Nosocomial outbreak of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Sudan

Abstract

To confirm the presence of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever in Sudan, we tested serum of 8 patients with hemorrhagic fever in a rural hospital in 2008. Reverse transcription-PCR identified Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus. Its identification as group III lineage indicated links to virus strains from South Africa, Mauritania, and Nigeria.

Figure

Phylogenetic relationship of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) full-length small (S) segments. Phylogenetic analysis used 47 full-length CCHFV S segments available in GenBank. GARLI (v0.96b8) (9) with default settings was used to generate a maximum-likelihood tree with bootstrap support values from 1,000 replicates. From the analysis, a 50% majority-rule tree was constructed. Virus strains from Sudan patients 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9 (GenBank accession no. GQ862371) were identical, and the virus sequence from patient 4 (GenBank accession no. GQ862372) differed by 1 nt. Each strain is listed by its location, strain name, and year of isolation, when available. Boldface indicates strains from Sudan; braces indicate previously described genetic lineages (8).