In each of the outbreaks there was high sequence identity between the strains isolated within each individual outbreak. SB525334 mw The strain causing the outbreak in November of the same year had the closest

sequence identity to the Gulu 2000 outbreak strain [20]. The first recorded outbreak caused by BDBV, representing the species Bundibugyo ebolavirus, occurred in Uganda in 2007 [7] (Table 3). The virus was found again in a 2012 outbreak in Isiro in the DRC: this was the first identification of BDBV in the DRC. The BDBV isolate showed 98.6% full genome sequence identity with the prototype BDBV isolated in the 2007 outbreak in Bundibugyo, Uganda [20]. While FHF outbreaks have been reported in few countries in Africa (Fig. 1, Tables 2

and 3), the geographical distribution of filoviruses may be wider than previously thought. A feature of recent outbreaks is new strains/species in new locations, as has been the case with the MVD outbreak in Angola, the discovery of BDBV in Uganda and the DRC, and the current EBOV infection in West Africa [7, 20, 29, 35]. Using ecological niche modeling, filovirus distribution was generally predicted to occur across the Afro-tropics, with ebolaviruses occurring in the central and western African rain forests learn more and marburgviruses in the drier and less forested central and eastern Africa [3]. Countries like Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritania have had no reported outbreaks of filovirus infections, but do fall within the ecological niche of

this virus and its reservoir(s). It is possible that there have been misdiagnosed and undiagnosed cases in countries with no FHF outbreak history. In some areas with no recorded outbreaks of EVD, EBOV seroprevalence in humans and some species of nonhuman primates has been found to be unexpectedly high [32, 36]. This suggests either MRIP the presence of non-pathogenic variants of EBOV or unknown filoviruses antigenically similar to EBOV, but with lower pathogenicity, causing high seropositivity [32, 37-39]. This also implies high exposure of these populations to the virus [36]. Wider filovirus distribution, even into the Eurasian continent, has been suggested by recent studies that have reported the discovery of RESTV in domestic pigs in China [40]; identification of a new filovirus, LLOV in Spain [41] and detection of antibodies to filoviruses or unknown filovirus-related viruses in Indonesian orangutans [42] and fruit bats in Bangladesh [43]. Apart from R. aegyptiacus, the only bat species from which infectious marburgviruses have been isolated, other bat species in which filovirus genome RNAs have been detected are Epomops franqueti, Hypsignathus monstrosus and Myonycteris torquata for EBOV [44]; Miniopterus inflatus and Rhinolophus eloquens for MARV [45], and Miniopterus schreibersii for LLOV [41]. Many more bat species have been found to have antibodies to various filoviruses [46].

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