Emerging Infectious Diseases (Jun 2014)

Human Infection with MERS Coronavirus after Exposure to Infected Camels, Saudi Arabia, 2013

  • Ziad A. Memish,
  • Matthew Cotten,
  • Benjamin Meyer,
  • Simon J. Watson,
  • Abdullah J. Alsahafi,
  • Abdullah A. Al Rabeeah,
  • Victor Max Corman,
  • Andrea Sieberg,
  • Hatem Q. Makhdoom,
  • Abdullah Assiri,
  • Malaki Al Masri,
  • Souhaib Aldabbagh,
  • Berend-Jan Bosch,
  • Martin Beer,
  • Marcel A. Müller,
  • Paul Kellam,
  • Christian Drosten

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2006.140402
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 20, no. 6
pp. 1012 – 1015

Abstract

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We investigated a case of human infection with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) after exposure to infected camels. Analysis of the whole human-derived virus and 15% of the camel-derived virus sequence yielded nucleotide polymorphism signatures suggestive of cross-species transmission. Camels may act as a direct source of human MERS-CoV infection.

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