Andes Virus Genome Mutations That Are Likely Associated with Animal Model Attenuation and Human Person-to-Person Transmission
Carla Bellomo, Daniel Oscar Alonso, Unai Pérez‐Sautu, Karla Prieto, Sebastián Kehl, Rocío Coelho, Natalia Períolo, Nicholas Di Paola, N.M. Ferressini Gerpe, Jens H. Kuhn, Mariano Sánchez-Lockhart, Gustavo Palacios, Valeria P. Martínez
Abstract
Several orthohantaviruses cause the zoonotic disease hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) in the Americas. Among them, HPS caused by Andes virus (ANDV) is of great public health concern because it is associated with the highest case fatality rate (up to 50%). ANDV is also the only orthohantavirus associated with relatively robust evidence of person-to-person transmission. This work reveals nucleotide changes in the ANDV genome that are associated with virulence attenuation in an animal model and increased transmissibility in humans. These findings may pave the way to early severity predictions in future ANDV-caused HPS outbreaks.