Geographic Distribution of Rabies Virus and Genomic Sequence Alignment of Wild and Vaccine Strains, Kenya

Rabies, a viral disease that causes lethal encephalitis, kills ≈59,000 persons worldwide annually, despite availability of effective countermeasures. Rabies is endemic in Kenya and is mainly transmitted to humans through bites from rabid domestic dogs. We analyzed 164 brain stems collected from rabid animals in western and eastern Kenya and evaluated the phylogenetic relationships of rabies virus (RABV) from the 2 regions. We also analyzed RABV genomes for potential amino acid changes in the vaccine antigenic sites of nucleoprotein and glycoprotein compared with RABV vaccine strains commonly used in Kenya. We found that RABV genomes from eastern Kenya overwhelmingly clustered with the Africa-1b subclade and RABV from western Kenya clustered with Africa-1a. We noted minimal amino acid variances between the wild and vaccine virus strains. These data confirm minimal viral migration between the 2 regions and that rabies endemicity is the result of limited vaccine coverage rather than limited efficacy.