A previously unknown reovirus of bat origin is associated with an acute respiratory disease in humans

*National Public Health Laboratory, Selangor 4700, Malaysia; and
^‡Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization Livestock Industries, Australian Animal Health Laboratory and Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Geelong, Victoria 3220, Australia

Edited by Robert A. Lamb, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, and approved May 14, 2007 (received for review February 13, 2007)

Abstract

Respiratory infections constitute the most widespread human infectious disease, and a substantial proportion of them are caused by unknown etiological agents. Reoviruses (respiratory enteric orphan viruses) were first isolated from humans in the early 1950s and so named because they were not associated with any known disease. Here, we report a previously unknown reovirus (named “Melaka virus”) isolated from a 39-year-old male patient in Melaka, Malaysia, who was suffering from high fever and acute respiratory disease at the time of virus isolation. Two of his family members developed similar symptoms ≈1 week later and had serological evidence of infection with the same virus. Epidemiological tracing revealed that the family was exposed to a bat in the house ≈1 week before the onset of the father's clinical symptoms. Genome sequence analysis indicated a close genetic relationship between Melaka virus and Pulau virus, a reovirus isolated in 1999 from fruit bats in Tioman Island, Malaysia. Screening of sera collected from human volunteers on the island revealed that 14 of 109 (13%) were positive for both Pulau and Melaka viruses. This is the first report of an orthoreovirus in association with acute human respiratory diseases. Melaka virus is serologically not related to the different types of mammalian reoviruses that were known to infect humans asymptomatically. These data indicate that bat-borne reoviruses can be transmitted to and cause clinical diseases in humans.

Footnotes

^†To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: chuakawbing{at}yahoo.com.sg or linfa.wang{at}csiro.au
Author contributions: G.C., A.H., and M.Y. contributed equally to this work; K.B.C. and L.-F.W. designed research; K.B.C., G.C., A.H., M.Y., M.R.T., J.R., J.M., and S.C. performed research; K.B.C., G.C., A.H., M.Y., S.C., V.K., B.T.E., and L.-F.W. analyzed data; and B.T.E. and L.-F.W. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Data deposition: The sequence reported in this paper has been deposited in the GenBank database (accession nos. EF026043–EF026046).
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0701372104/DC1.
Abbreviations:

CPE,

cytopathic effect;

MDCK,

Madin–Darby canine kidney;

MelV,

Melaka virus;

MRV,

mammalian orthoreoviruses;

NBV,

Nelson Bay orthoreovirus;

NiV,

Nipah virus;

PulV,

Pulau virus;

RTI,

respiratory tract illness;

SARS,

severe acute respiratory syndrome;

TCID50,

tissue culture 50% infective dose.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.