Acta virologica
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Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a mosquito-transmitted alphavirus that causes Chikungunya fever (CHIKF) in millions of people mainly in developing countries. CHIKF is characterized by high fever, fatigue, headache, nausea, vomiting, rash, myalgia and severe arthralgia. ⋯ The VSV pseudotype can be applied to the epidemic survey by measuring the expression of GFP or luciferase activity in infected cells. This system can also be used to study the mechanisms of virus entry.
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The chemokine (C-C motif) receptor 5 (CCR5) represents a major co-receptor for macrophagetropic Human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) strains. A 32 bp deletion mutant allele in the CCR5 gene (CCR5-Δ32) provides to homozygotes a strong resistance to HIV-1 infection. In this study, the prevalence of CCR5-Δ32 in 200 HIV-1-negative and 162 HIV-1-positive individuals was determined. ⋯ In HIV-1-positive patients, no homozygous CCR5-Δ32 was found, while heterozygous CCR5-Δ32 occurred in 15.4% patients. Thus, no significant difference between HIV-1- negative and HIV-1-positive individuals was found, what is in accord with the findings obtained in other EU countries. The results of this study do not indicate that a relatively low incidence of HIV-1 infection in Slovakia could be caused by the CCR5-Δ32 mutation.
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Review Historical Article
Q fever--still a query and underestimated infectious disease.
Coxiella burnetii (C.b.) is a strictly intracellular, Gram-negative bacterium. It causes Q fever in humans and animals worldwide. The animal Q fever is sometimes designated "coxiellosis". ⋯ Application of Q fever vaccines containing or prepared from phase I C.b. corpuscles should be considered at least for professionally exposed groups of the population. Infections caused by C.b. are spread worldwide and may pose serious and often underestimated health problems in human but also in veterinary medicine. Though during the last decades substantial progress in investigation of C.b. has been achieved and many data concerning this pathogen has been accumulated, some questions, namely those related to the pathogenesis of the disease, remain open.
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A new phlebovirus (Bunyaviridae family, Phlebovirus genus), provisionally designed Chizé virus, was isolated from a nymph of Ixodes (Trichotoixodes) frontalis collected on a wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) found dead in the Chizé forest, western France. Chizé virus produced a lethal encephalitis in one-day-old mice and cytopathic effect (CPE) in Vero cells. ⋯ Chizé virus reacted in complement-fixation test with several UUK serogroup viruses but was readily distinguished from all registered viruses in the serogroup. I. frontalis is highly specific for birds and unlikely to transmit Chizé virus to humans or domestic animals; the pathogenicity of the new virus to wild birds remains to be clarified.