• Jessica S Russell, Leon Caly, Renata Kostecki, Sarah L McGuinness, Glen Carter, Dieter Bulach, Torsten Seemann, Tim P Stinear, Rob Baird, Mike Catton, and Julian Druce.
• Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, 792 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia. jessica.russell@mh.org.au.
• Viruses Basel. 2018 Jun 11; 10 (6).

AbstractMurray Valley Encephalitis virus (MVEV) is a mosquito-borne Flavivirus. Clinical presentation is rare but severe, with a case fatality rate of 15⁻30%. Here we report a case of MVEV from the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of a patient in the Northern Territory in Australia. Initial diagnosis was performed using both MVEV-specific real-time, and Pan-Flavivirus conventional, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), with confirmation by Sanger sequencing. Subsequent isolation, the first from CSF, was conducted in Vero cells and the observed cytopathic effect was confirmed by increasing viral titre in the real-time PCR. Isolation allowed for full genome sequencing using the Scriptseq V2 RNASeq library preparation kit. A consensus genome for VIDRL-MVE was generated and phylogenetic analysis identified it as Genotype 2. This is the first reported isolation, and full genome sequencing of MVEV from CSF. It is also the first time Genotype 2 has been identified in humans. As such, this case has significant implications for public health surveillance, epidemiology, and the understanding of MVEV evolution.

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