Puumala virus (PUUV), carried by bank voles (Myodes glareolus), is the medically most important hantavirus in Central and Western Europe. In this study, a total of 523 bank voles (408 from Germany, 72 from Slovakia, and 43 from Czech Republic) collected between the years 2007-2012 were analyzed for the presence of hantavirus RNA. Partial PUUV genome segment sequences were obtained from 51 voles. Phylogenetic analyses of all three genome segments showed that the newfound strains cluster with other Central and Western European PUUV strains. The new sequences from Šumava (Bohemian Forest), Czech Republic, are most closely related to the strains from the neighboring Bavarian Forest, a known hantavirus disease outbreak region. Interestingly, the Slovak strains clustered with the sequences from Bohemian and Bavarian Forests only in the M but not S segment analyses. This well-supported topological incongruence suggests a segment reassortment event or, as we analyzed only partial sequences, homologous recombination. Our data highlight the necessity of sequencing all three hantavirus genome segments and of a broader bank vole screening not only in recognized endemic foci but also in regions with no reported human hantavirus disease cases.

Biomedical Research Center Institute of Virology Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratislava Slovakia

Department of Biomedical Sciences University of Cagliari Monserrato CA Italy

Department of Forest Ecology Mendel University in Brno Brno Czech Republic

Department of Infectious Diseases Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine King's College London London UK

Department of Virology and Rickettsiology Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology Munich Germany

Division of Clinical and Epidemiological Virology Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Unit KU Leuven Rega Institute Leuven Belgium

Faculty of Natural Sciences Comenius University in Bratislava Bratislava Slovakia

Institute for Novel and Emerging Infectious Diseases Friedrich Loeffler Institut Federal Research Institute for Animal Health Greifswald Insel Riems Germany

Institute of Parasitology Slovak Academy of Sciences Košice Slovakia

Institute of Virology Charité University Hospital Helmut Ruska Haus Berlin Germany

National Institute of Public Health Prague Czech Republic

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