RESUMO
The resurgence of Chikungunya virus is described during an urban epidemic in Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo, after 39 years without any isolation of the virus. Chikungunya virus was isolated in sera from nine patients with clinical symptoms. A 1,200 bp long partial sequence of the E1/3'UTR genomic region was determined for each isolate. All sequences clustered in the central African lineage. They constitute Chikungunya virus reference sequences for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Assuntos
Infecções por Alphavirus/epidemiologia , Doenças Transmissíveis Emergentes/epidemiologia , Surtos de Doenças , Infecções por Alphavirus/virologia , Anticorpos Antivirais/sangue , Vírus Chikungunya/classificação , Vírus Chikungunya/genética , Vírus Chikungunya/imunologia , Vírus Chikungunya/isolamento & purificação , Doenças Transmissíveis Emergentes/virologia , República Democrática do Congo/epidemiologia , Humanos , Malária Falciparum/complicações , Epidemiologia Molecular , Dados de Sequência Molecular , Filogenia , Análise de Sequência de DNARESUMO
Phosphorothioate oligodeoxyribonucleotides targeted to different regions of the viral genome were synthesized and used in two kinds of experiments testing their activity against yellow fever virus (YFV) replication in cultured cells. We found that oligonucleotides complementary to the 3'-end or to the coding region of the viral RNA were regularly active in plaque reduction assay, although with inconstant efficiency. Oligonucleotides targeted to the 5'-end or to the initiation codon region exhibited lesser activity. Homologous oligonucleotides targeted to dengue virus RNA had no detectable inhibitory activity against dengue virus replication. However, in YFV production reduction assay, a non-specific inhibitory activity of a random oligonucleotide was observed. Taken as a whole, our results indicate that flaviviruses present detectable but heterogeneous sensitivity to phosphorothioate inhibition. Possible explanations are discussed.