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Serological evidence of MERS-CoV and HKU8-related CoV co-infection in Kenyan camels

2019; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/22221751.2019.1679610

2222-1751

Wei Zhang, Xiao-Shuang Zheng, Bernard Agwanda, Sheila C. Ommeh, Kai Zhao, Jacqueline Kasiiti Lichoti, Ning Wang, Jing Chen, Bei Li, Xing‐Lou Yang, Shailendra Mani, Kisa-Juma Ngeiywa, Yan Zhu, Ben Hu, Samson Omondi Onyuok, Bing Yan, Danielle E. Anderson, Lin‐Fa Wang, Peng Zhou, Zheng‐Li Shi,

Immunotherapy and Immune Responses

Dromedary camels are important reservoir hosts of various coronaviruses, including Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) that cause human infections. CoV genomes regularly undergo recombination during infection as observed in bat SARS-related CoVs. Here we report for the first time that only a small proportion of MERS-CoV receptor-binding domain positive (RBD) of spike protein positive camel sera in Kenya were also seropositive to MERS-CoV nucleocapsid (NP). In contrast, many of them contain antibodies against bat HKU8-related (HKU8r)-CoVs. Among 584 camel samples that were positive against MERS-CoV RBD, we found only 0.48 (8.22%) samples were also positive for NP. Furthermore, we found bat HKU8r-CoV NP antibody in 73 (12.5%) of the MERS-CoV RBD positive and NP negative samples, yet found only 3 (0.43%) of the HKU8r-CoV S1 antibody in the same samples. These findings may indicate co-infection with MERS-CoV and a HKU8r-CoV in camels. It may also raise the possibility of the circulation of a recombinant coronavirus virus with the spike of MERS-CoV and the NP of a HKU8r-CoV in Kenya. We failed to find molecular evidence of an HKU8r-CoV or a putative recombinant virus. Our findings should alert other investigators to look for molecular evidence of HKU8r-CoV or recombinants.