Jagadeeswaran Deventhiran, Bhuvaneswari Srinivasan, Manoharan Seeralan, Vijayarani Kanagaraj, Sangeetha Raju, Kumanan Kathaperumal, Ruth Nissly, Sunitha Manjari Kasibhatla, Mohan M Kale, Urmila Kulkarni-Kale and Suresh V Kuchipudi*
Rabies is an emerging and re-emerging lethal viral encephalitis causing 26,400 to 61,000 human deaths annually. Domestic dog continues to be the key reservoir of rabies in endemic countries and almost all the human rabies deaths are attributed to dog bite. With regular interspecies transmission events of Rabies Viruses (RABVs) from dogs to humans, ~36% of the world’s rabies deaths occur in India that accounts to 20,000 fatalities due to rabies every year. Rabies is endemic among domestic dogs and due to sustained dog to human transmission it is conceivable that RABVs in India continue to evolve. Further, regular movement of people and animals between southern coastal states of India and Sri Lanka was proposed to be a source of the emergence of variant RABV in India. Hence it is essential to characterize the genetic diversity and evolutionary dynamics of RABV currently circulating in India. Molecular evolution analyses of 20 Nucleoprotein (N) and 22 Glycoprotein (G) genes of RABV isolates from southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Goa were carried out. Continued co-circulation of ancient subcontinent lineage was observed despite predominance of the recent arctic-like lineage RABVs in Southern India. The study found a higher mean rate of evolutionary changes in G gene among Indian dog RABV isolates than those of Lyssaviruses. The Indian subcontinent lineage RABV isolates investigated in this study clustered closely with other subcontinent lineage viruses from Sri Lanka highlighting the continued incursion and/or circulation of the variant subcontinent lineages of RABVs between India and Sri Lanka. In conclusion, we report that there is enzootic viral establishment of two distinct RABV lineages in domestic dogs in India that are evolving at a greater rate. Our results highlight the need to implement effective intervention strategies to prevent this deadly zoonotic disease in the region.
Journal of Phylogenetics & Evolutionary Biology received 911 citations as per Google Scholar report
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