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An outbreak of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis associated with coxsackievirus A24 variant in The Gambia, West Africa
Identifier
027575
Type of Spiritual Experience
None
Background
A description of the experience
BMC Res Notes. 2017; 10: 692.
Published online 2017 Dec 6. doi: 10.1186/s13104-017-3007-9
PMCID: PMC5717804
PMID: 29208044
An outbreak of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis associated with coxsackievirus A24 variant in The Gambia, West Africa
Sarah E. Burr, 1,2 Ansumana Sillah,3 Hassan Joof,2 Robin L. Bailey,1 and Martin J. Holland1
Objective
An outbreak of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis occurred in The Gambia, West Africa in 2011. Affected individuals presented with conjunctival haemorrhages, swelling and ocular discharge. In an effort to identify a causative agent of the disease, ocular swabs were taken from patients during the acute and convalescent phases. Total RNA was extracted from all samples and reverse-transcriptase PCR performed using primers specific for all enteroviruses. Resulting amplicons were sequenced and data compared to known sequences using the BLAST algorithm.
Results
Forty-eight swabs were included in the analysis. Of these, 21 acute and 9 convalescent swabs (65% of the total) gave positive PCR results. Sequence analysis of the resulting amplicons indicated 99% sequence identity with coxsackievirus A24 variant identified during independent outbreaks of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis around the world and suggest the Gambian outbreak was due to this virus.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.1186/s13104-017-3007-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Keywords: Apollo 11 disease, Acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis, Coxsackievirus A24 variant, The Gambia