Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus in dromedary camels: an outbreak investigation

By B. Haagmans, Said H S Al Dhahiry, C. Reusken, V. S. Raj, M. Galiano, R. Myers, G. Godeke, M. Jonges, E. Farag, A. Diab and 10 more. Lancet. Infectious Diseases (Print), 2013

673 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary Background Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) causes severe lower respiratory tract infection in people. Previous studies suggested dromedary camels were a reservoir for this virus. We tested for the presence of MERS-CoV in dromedary camels from a farm in Qatar linked to two human cases of the infection in October, 2013. Methods We took nose swabs, rectal swabs, and blood samples from all camels on the Qatari farm. We tested swabs with RT-PCR, with amplification targeting the E gene (upE), nucleocapsid (N) gene, and open reading frame (ORF) 1a. PCR positive samples were tested by different MERS-CoV specific PCRs and obtained sequences were used for phylogentic analysis together with sequences from the linked human cases and other human cases. We tested serum samples from the camels for IgG immunofluorescence assay, protein microarray, and virus neutralisation assay. Findings We obtained samples from 14 camels on Oct 17, 2013. We detected MERS-CoV in nose swabs from three camels by three independent RT-PCRs and sequencing. The nucleotide sequence of an ORF1a fragment (940 nucleotides) and a 4·2 kb concatenated fragment were very similar to the MERS-CoV from two human cases on the same farm and a MERS-CoV isolate from Hafr-Al-Batin. Eight additional camel nose swabs were positive on one or more RT-PCRs, but could not be confirmed by sequencing. All camels had MERS-CoV spike-binding antibodies that correlated well with the presence of neutralising antibodies to MERS-CoV. Interpretation Our study provides virological confirmation of MERS-CoV in camels and suggests a recent outbreak affecting both human beings and camels. We cannot conclude whether the people on the farm were infected by the camels or vice versa, or if a third source was responsible. Funding European Union projects EMPERIE (contract number 223498), ANTIGONE (contract number 278976), and the VIRGO consortium.

Subfields: Animal Science and Zoology, Food Science, Infectious Diseases

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Citations in the corpus

Structure, Function, and Evolution of Coronavirus Spike Proteins (2016, background): “suggesting a camel-to-human transmission of MERS-CoV (77, 78).”
NCBI Viral Genomes Resource (2014, background): “Recent outbreaks of Ebolavirus (1,2) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) (3,4) clearly demonstrate the power of sequence analysis in viral surveillance, host reservoir identification and public health policy debate.”
Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 99 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a descriptive study (2020, background): “11, 12 The sequence of 2019nCoV is relatively different from the six other coronavirus subtypes but can be classified as betacoronavirus.”
COVID-19: The first documented coronavirus pandemic in history (2020, neutral): “example, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV crossed the species barriers into masked palm civets and camels, respectively [30,31] [Table 1].”
Structure, Function, and Antigenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein (2020, background): “MERS-CoV was suggested to originate from bats, but the reservoir host fueling spillover to humans is unequivocally dromedary camels (Haagmans et al., 2014; Memish et al., 2013).”
From SARS to MERS: crystallographic studies on coronaviral proteases enable antiviral drug design (2014, background): “In the case of MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV), bats were again suspected to be the reservoir as a few coronaviruses with high sequence similarity to MERS-CoV were discovered in African and European bats [21, 22] , but in recent months the picture has changed somewhat and dromedary camels are now the ma”
Further Evidence for Bats as the Evolutionary Source of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (2017, background): “MERS-CoV was subsequently detected in camels at a farm linked to two human cases in Qatar (5) and in camels in Egypt (6), followed by surveys that demonstrated widespread exposure to the virus in the Middle East and in North and East Africa as early as the 1980s (7–10).”
Screening of an FDA-Approved Compound Library Identifies Four Small-Molecule Inhibitors of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Replication in Cell Culture (2014, background): “This sharp increase in reported infections has enhanced 72 concerns that we might be confronted with a repeat of the 2003 severe acute respiratory 73 syndrome (SARS) episode, concerns aggravated by the fact that the animal reservoir for MERS74 CoV remains to be identified with certainty (6-9).”
Structural insights into coronavirus entry (2019, background): “human CoVs a global health threat (Ge et al., 2013; Haagmans et al., 2014; Hu et al., 2017; Menachery et al., 2015, 2016; Sabir et al., 2016).”
Improved inference of time-varying reproduction numbers during infectious disease outbreaks (2019, background): “Since the dromedary camel is considered as a reservoir species of the MERS-coronavirus (Haagmans et al., 2014), we interpreted reported regular contact with animals as an indication of infection from the reservoir.”
Prophylactic and postexposure efficacy of a potent human monoclonal antibody against MERS coronavirus (2015, background): “This has been demonstrated for infections including Spanish influenza pneumonia during 1918 1919 (18), SARS-CoV (19), H5N1 influenza A virus (20), and more recently severe H1N1 influenza A virus infection (21).”
Unexpected Receptor Functional Mimicry Elucidates Activation of Coronavirus Fusion (2020, neutral): “2005), whereas MERS-CoV is found in dromedary camels as a natural reservoir (Haagmans et al., 2014; Memish et al., 2013).”
SARS and MERS: recent insights into emerging coronaviruses (2016, positive): “In addition, MERS-CoV RNA was detected in swabs that were collected from dromedary camels at a farm in Qatar that was linked to two human cases of MERS, and infectious virus was isolated from dromedary camels in Saudi Arabia and Qatar 29–32 .”