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Saffold virus capable of causing severe infection
Nielsen ACY. Emerg Infect Dis. 2012;doi:10.3201/eid1801.110725.
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The Saffold virus can cause serious invasive infection in children, according to a new study from Denmark.
Little evidence exists on the association between Saffold virus (SAFV) and human disease. Therefore, Alex Christian Yde Nielsen, MD, of the University of Southern Denmark, and colleagues designed a real-time polymerase chain reaction for SAFV and tested cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples from children aged younger than 4 years.
SAFV was detected in two patients. The virus was detected in the CSF and a fecal sample from one patient with monosymptomatic ataxia caused by cerebellitis. In the second patient — who died suddenly with no history of illness — SAFV was found in the CSF, blood and myocardium.
For each of these two children, SAFV was detected in at least one compartment other than the central nervous system.
“This finding strengthens the evidence of an acute infection as the cause of clinical disease,” the researchers wrote.
In the first patient, SAFV was found in the CSF and a fecal sample. In the second patient, SAFV was found in three invasively collected samples taken from the CSF, myocardium and blood. No other credible cause of infection was found for either of the two children, according to the findings.
The researchers said the only other positive finding for the first patient was parechovirus type 3 in a fecal sample taken 2 weeks after onset of disease. However, parechovirus was not found in the CSF and, therefore, seems unlikely as the cause of the acute symptoms.
Several types of bacteria were identified in the second patient, “but these seem unlikely to be the cause of death because culture of postmortem samples often grows commensal organisms,” the researchers wrote, adding that the bacteria were not found consistently in the tissue samples.
Further studies are needed to determine the exact correlation of SAFV to disease in humans, they concluded.
SAFV was discovered by Jones and colleagues in 2007 by sequence-independent genomic amplification of virus isolated from a fecal sample. The sample was obtained in 1981 from an 8-month-old child with fever of unknown origin. The genetic sequence of the virus indicated that the virus belonged to the species Theilovirus of the genus Cardiovirus, which contains three other members: Theiler’s murine encephalomyelitis virus; Vilyuisk human encephalomyelitis virus; and Thera virus.
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