Prevalence of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in dromedary camels in Abu Dhabi Emirate, United Arab Emirates

Abstract

High seroprevalence of Middle East respiratory syndrome corona virus (MERS-CoV) in dromedary camels has been previously reported in United Arab Emirates (UAE). However, the molecular detection of the virus has never been reported before in UAE. Of the 7,803 nasal swabs tested in the epidemiological survey, MERS-CoV nucleic acid was detected by real-time PCR in a total of 126 (1.6 %) camels. Positive camels were detected at the borders with Saudi Arabia and Oman and in camels' slaughter houses. MERS-CoV partial sequences obtained from UAE camels were clustering with human- and camel-derived MERS-CoV sequences in the same geographic area. Results provide further evidence of MERS-CoV zoonosis.

Fig. 1

Phylogenetic analysis of the nucleic acid sequence of (7) new ORF1a, ORF1ab, Spike1, Spike2, and NSP4 partial MERS-CoV sequences from UAE together with (11) camels and (44) human MERS-CoV corresponding published sequences currently available in GenBank. Values ≥50 are indicated on the branches (as percentages). Sequences from the present study (colored closed symbols) are named as follows: UAE-Camel-PP, where PP is the number of strains. Sequences from GenBank were given the country name followed by name of the strain. The two major groups were identified as A, B