Characterization of hantaviruses circulating in Central Brazil

In 2004, an outbreak of HCPS in Brazil made hantaviruses a national threat to the rural and urban population. During this outbreak, 164 cases were reported, and 18.3% of them occurred in the Federal District. In this study, hantavirus genomic sequences were amplified from seven patients who resided in Central Brazil and then sequenced and compared to other hantavirus sequences. The complete S segment sequence, which is 1847 bases long and potentially encodes the 428 amino acid nucleocapsid protein, was determined for one patient. Moreover, a 700 base-pair sequence of the S segment was obtained from two other patients, and we analyzed M segment sequences from all samples. It can be inferred by both identity and phylogenetic analysis that the sequences obtained are highly related to Araraquara variant and Maciel virus. Phylogenetic results show that hantaviruses isolated in Central Brazil can be divided into two monophyletic groups: one group that clusters with Araraquara variant and the other group that includes the complete S segment sequence obtained in this study. Therefore, we propose the name Paranoa for this variant that co-exists with the Araraquara-like hantavirus in Central Brazil.