Detection of Brazilian Hantavirus by Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction Amplification of N Gene in Patients with Hantavirus Cardiopulmonary Syndrome

We report a nested reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay for hantavirus using prim-ers selected to match high homology regions of hantavirus genomes detected from the whole blood of hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS) patients from Brazil, also including the N gene nucleotide sequence of Araraquara virus. Hantavirus genomes were detected in eight out of nine blood samples from the HCPS patients by RT-PCR (88.9 % positivity) and in all 9 blood samples (100 % positivity) by nested-PCR. The eight amplicons obtained by RT-PCR (P1, P3-P9), including one obtained by nested-PCR (P-2) and not obtained by RT-PCR, were sequenced and showed high homology (94.8 % to 99.1%) with the N gene of Araraquara hantavirus. Although the serologic method ELISA is the most appropriate test for HCPS diagnosis, the use of nested RT-PCR for hantavirus in Brazil would contribute to the diagnosis of acute hantavirus disease detecting viral genomes in patient specimens as well as initial genomic characterization of circulating hantaviruses. Key words: hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome- nested RT-PCR- N gene of hantavirus Since it was described in 1993, hantavirus cardiopul-monary syndrome (HCPS) has been reported in virtually the entire American Continent. Presently, most of the re-ported HCPS cases are from South America, where th