FAO Reference Center for Rabies, Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie, 35020 Legnaro, Italy.
Centre for Viral Zoonoses, Department of Medical Virology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0001, South Africa.
Viruses. 2022 Feb 28;14(3):492. doi: 10.3390/v14030492.
Accurate host identification is paramount to understand disease epidemiology and to apply appropriate control measures. This is especially important for multi-host pathogens such as the rabies virus, a major and almost invariably fatal zoonosis that has mobilized unanimous engagement at an international level towards the final goal of zero human deaths due to canine rabies. Currently, diagnostic laboratories implement a standardized identification using taxonomic keys. However, this method is challenged by high and undiscovered biodiversity, decomposition of carcasses and subjective misevaluation, as has been attested to by findings from a cohort of 242 archived specimens collected across Sub-Saharan Africa and submitted for rabies diagnosis. We applied two simple and cheap methods targeting the Cytochrome b and Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I to confirm the initial classification. We therefore suggest prioritizing a standardized protocol that includes, as a first step, the implementation of taxonomic keys at a family or subfamily level, followed by the molecular characterization of the host species.
准确的宿主鉴定对于了解疾病流行病学和采取适当的控制措施至关重要。对于多宿主病原体（如狂犬病病毒）来说尤其如此，这种病原体是一种主要的、几乎总是致命的人畜共患病，它促使国际社会一致努力，最终实现零因犬类狂犬病导致的人类死亡。目前，诊断实验室使用分类学钥匙进行标准化鉴定。然而，这种方法受到高未被发现的生物多样性、尸体分解和主观误判的挑战，这一点从在撒哈拉以南非洲收集的 242 个存档标本的队列研究中得到了证实，这些标本是为了进行狂犬病诊断而提交的。我们应用了两种简单而廉价的方法，针对细胞色素 b 和细胞色素 c 氧化酶亚基 I，以确认初步分类。因此，我们建议优先采用标准化方案，包括首先在科或亚科水平上实施分类学钥匙，然后对宿主物种进行分子特征分析。
