期刊
BMC BIOLOGY
卷 11, 期 -, 页码 -出版社
BMC
DOI: 10.1186/1741-7007-11-76
关键词
HCV; Outbreak; Forensics; Molecular epidemiology; Nosocomial transmission; Compartmentalization; Maximum likelihood; Dating transmission events; Viral evolution
类别
资金
- Generalitat Valenciana (Direccio General de Salut Publica, Conselleria de Sanitat)
- Spanish Government from MCYT [BMC2001-3096, BFU2005-00503/BMC]
- Spanish Government from ISCIII-FIS [CP07/00078]
- Spanish Government from MICINN [BFU2008-03000]
- Spanish Government from MECO [BFU2011-24112]
- European Union [HPMD-CT-2000-00056, MERG-CT-2004-006328]
Background: Molecular phylogenetic analyses are used increasingly in the epidemiological investigation of outbreaks and transmission cases involving rapidly evolving RNA viruses. Here, we present the results of such an analysis that contributed to the conviction of an anesthetist as being responsible for the infection of 275 of his patients with hepatitis C virus. Results: We obtained sequences of the NS5B and E1-E2 regions in the viral genome for 322 patients suspected to have been infected by the doctor, and for 44 local, unrelated controls. The analysis of 4,184 cloned sequences of the E1-E2 region allowed us to exclude 47 patients from the outbreak. A subset of patients had known dates of infection. We used these data to calibrate a relaxed molecular clock and to determine a rough estimate of the time of infection for each patient. A similar analysis led to an estimate for the time of infection of the source. The date turned out to be 10 years before the detection of the outbreak. The number of patients infected was small at first, but it increased substantially in the months before the detection of the outbreak. Conclusions: We have developed a procedure to integrate molecular phylogenetic reconstructions of rapidly evolving viral populations into a forensic setting adequate for molecular epidemiological analysis of outbreaks and transmission events. We applied this procedure to a large outbreak of hepatitis C virus caused by a single source and the results obtained played a key role in the trial that led to the conviction of the suspected source.
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