Molecular characterization of nucleoprotein gene of rabies virus from Maharashtra, India.

CONTEXT: Rabies poses a serious public health concern in developing countries such as India.

AIMS: The study focuses on molecular diagnosis of street rabies virus (RABV) from human clinical specimens received from Maharashtra, India.

MATERIALS AND

METHODS

Nucleoprotein gene from eight (of total 20 suspected samples) rabies cases that tested positive for rabies antigen using reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) were sequenced.

RESULTS

Sequence analysis using basic local alignment search tool (BLAST) and multiple sequence alignment (MSA) and phylogenetic analysis showed similarity to previously reported sequences from India and those of Arctic lineages.

CONCLUSIONS

The circulating RABV strains in Maharashtra, India show genetic relatedness to RABV strains reported from Indo-Arctic lineages and India-South and Japan.