Infectious and tropical diseases remain one of the principal causes of morbidity and mortality in the world. This is particularly the case in the Amazonian region that meets many favorable factors to the occurrence of epidemics and the appearance of new pathogens. Located in this region, French Guiana is also subjected to many endemic infectious diseases, (dengue, yellow fever and other arboviroses…) or emerging diseases (chikungunya, Zika,..) constituting a threat to public health and economic development, particularly during the epidemics event.
In August-September 2020, more than forty patients from SaĆ¼l, a rainforest village developed a Dengue-Like Syndrome. First biological investigations (Dengue RT-PCR and serodiagnosis for alpha and Flavivirus) were negative for all the patients tested. Further investigations revealed the presence of Oropouche-like virus (OROV) genome by real time PCR demonstrating the first detection of active circulation of this virus in French Guiana.
OROV belongs to the Peribunyaviridae family, Orthobunyavirus genus. Its genome is constituted of three segments (Small, Medium and Large) of 12kb length with possible reassortment of segment conducing to different OROV-like viruses.
The main objective of this study is to characterize the complete genome sequence of this emerging virus.
The second objective is to establish phylogenetic relationships of this virus among orthobunyavirus and classified it among the different lineages previously described.
In this project, from five patients diagnosed positive, we will sequence in parallel the OROV strains directly from primary samples (patient sera) and after isolation on vero cell line This will allow improving our knowledge on this emerging virus circulating in French Guiana and developing and adapting new diagnostic tools.