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. 2017 Dec 6;10(1):692.
doi: 10.1186/s13104-017-3007-9.

An outbreak of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis associated with coxsackievirus A24 variant in The Gambia, West Africa

Sarah E Burr  1   2 , Ansumana Sillah  3 , Hassan Joof  4 , Robin L Bailey  5 , Martin J Holland  5
Affiliations

An outbreak of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis associated with coxsackievirus A24 variant in The Gambia, West Africa

Sarah E Burr et al. BMC Res Notes. .

Abstract

Objective: An outbreak of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis occurred in The Gambia, West Africa in 2011. Affected individuals presented with conjunctival haemorrhages, swelling and ocular discharge. In an effort to identify a causative agent of the disease, ocular swabs were taken from patients during the acute and convalescent phases. Total RNA was extracted from all samples and reverse-transcriptase PCR performed using primers specific for all enteroviruses. Resulting amplicons were sequenced and data compared to known sequences using the BLAST algorithm.

Results: Forty-eight swabs were included in the analysis. Of these, 21 acute and 9 convalescent swabs (65% of the total) gave positive PCR results. Sequence analysis of the resulting amplicons indicated 99% sequence identity with coxsackievirus A24 variant identified during independent outbreaks of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis around the world and suggest the Gambian outbreak was due to this virus.

Keywords: Acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis; Apollo 11 disease; Coxsackievirus A24 variant; The Gambia.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Multiple sequence alignment generated in T-Coffee [16]. Consensus sequence data obtained from ocular swabs from Gambian patients presenting with acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis (AHC) in comparison to CVA24v (GenBank Accession No. KR399988) and EV70 (GenBank Accession No. D00820)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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