SHORT REPORT - ISOLATION AND PARTIAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A PUUMALA-VIRUS FROM A HUMAN CASE OF NEPHROPATHIA-EPIDEMICA IN FRANCE

Puumala (PUU) virus (Bunyaviridae: Hantavirus), the etiologic agent of nephropathia epidemica (NE), the mild form of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, is enzootic in Europe and has been known to occur in F rance since 1983. We report the first isolation of PUU virus in France and western Europe from a case of NE acquired in France. The virus wa s isolated from a serum collected in the acute phase of the clinical c ourse by successive blind passages in Vero E6 cells. Serologic typing using monoclonal antibodies confirmed the identity of the virus as PUU . The sequence of an 832-nucleotide fragment of the virus medium RNA s egment obtained by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) also classified it as a PUU virus. The sequence of this isolate from a human case in France is closely related to the sequence of a PUU virus obtained by t he PCR from a German patient.