Orthohantaviruses are emerging viruses present worldwide in association with rodents, their natural reservoir. Each orthohantavirus species is specific of a particular rodent reservoir in which they do not cause any obvious symptoms. In contrast, they can be pathogenic to humans when occasionally transmitted by aerosol of urine and feces from infected rodents. They can be asymptomatic in humans or cause two types of disease according to the geographical origin of the virus: the hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) in Eurasia and the hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS) in North and South America and lethality rates depending on the virus can reach 15% and 40 % respectively. Little is known about the physio pathology of orthohantaviruses and their different outcomes in their different hosts. One of our goal is to understand how they interact with their hosts and in particular how they regulate cellular gene expression to persist in an asymptomatic way in rodents with which they developed a long lasting adaptation. For this purpose, we used kidney cells from bank vole (Myodes glareolus), the natural host of Puumala virus (PUUV) responsible of nephropathies in Europe and compare the effect of infection by this orthohantavirus to the effect of infection by Prospect hill virus (PHV) which is non-pathogenic to human and have another vole (Microtus pensylvanicus) as natural host. It is important to better understand how orthohantavirus interact with cellular functions and counteract antiviral pathways to propagate in an organism.
Related team publications: