Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus Infection, South Korea, 2010

Abstract

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) was reported in China in 2009 and in South Korea in 2012. We found retrospective evidence of SFTS virus infection in South Korea in 2010, suggesting that infections in South Korea occurred before previously reported and were more concurrent with those in China.

Keywords: SFTSV; South Korea; severe fever with thrombocytopenia virus; thrombocytopenia; viruses.

Figure

Phylogenetic tree constructed based on partial small segment sequences of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus identified in stored serum samples collected in 2010 from 2 patients in South Korea (bold) compared with reference viruses. We constructed the tree using the maximum-likelihood method with MEGA 6 (10). The partial small sequence data for the viruses identified in China, South Korea, and Japan were obtained from GenBank (accession numbers in parentheses). Scale bar indicates nucleotide substitutions per site.