Isolation of infectious Lloviu virus from Schreiber’s bats in Hungary

Kemenesi, Gábor and Tóth, Gábor E. and Mayora-Neto, Martin and Scott, Simon and Temperton, Nigel and Wright, Edward and Mühlberger, Elke and Hume, Adam J. and Suder, Ellen L. and Zana, Brigitta and Boldogh, Sándor A. and Görföl, Tamás and Estók, Péter and Szentiványi, Tamara and Lanszki, Zsófia and Somogyi, Balázs A. and Nagy, Ágnes and Pereszlényi, Csaba I. and Dudás, Gábor and Földes, Fanni and Kurucz, Kornélia and Madai, Mónika and Zeghbib, Safia and Maes, Piet and Vanmechelen, Bert and Jakab, Ferenc (2022) Isolation of infectious Lloviu virus from Schreiber’s bats in Hungary. NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 13 (1). ISSN 2041-1723

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Abstract

Some filoviruses can be transmitted to humans by zoonotic spillover events from their natural host and filovirus outbreaks have occured with increasing frequency in the last years. The filovirus Lloviu virus (LLOV), was identified in 2002 in Schreiber’s bats (Miniopterus schreibersii) in Spain and was subsequently detected in bats in Hungary. Here we isolate infectious LLOV from the blood of a live sampled Schreiber’s bat in Hungary. The isolate is subsequently sequenced and cultured in the Miniopterus sp. kidney cell line SuBK12-08. It is furthermore able to infect monkey and human cells, suggesting that LLOV might have spillover potential. A multi-year surveillance of LLOV in bats in Hungary detects LLOV RNA in both deceased and live animals as well as in coupled ectoparasites from the families Nycteribiidae and Ixodidae. This correlates with LLOV seropositivity in sampled Schreiber’s bats. Our data support the role of bats, specifically Miniopterus schreibersii as hosts for LLOV in Europe. We suggest that bat-associated parasites might play a role in the natural ecology of filoviruses in temperate climate regions compared to filoviruses in the tropics.

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