Emerging Infectious Diseases (Mar 1998)

Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome in a Chilean Patient with Recent Travel in Bolivia

  • Ricardo Espinoza,
  • Pablo Vial,
  • Luis M. Noriega,
  • Angela Johnson,
  • Stuart T. Nichol,
  • Pierre E. Rollin,
  • Rachel Wells,
  • Sherif Zaki,
  • Enrique Reynolds,
  • Thomas G. Ksiazek

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3201/eid0401.980112
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 1
pp. 93 – 95

Abstract

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A case of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) was serologically confirmed in a critically ill patient in Santiago, Chile. The patient's clinical course had many similarities to that of other HPS patients in North and South America but was complicated by acute severe renal failure. The patient's history included self-reported urban and probable rural rodent exposure during travel in Bolivia. Comparison of a viral sequence from an acute-phase serum sample with other known hantaviruses showed that the hantavirus nucleic acid sequence from the patient was very similar to a virus recently isolated from rodents associated with HPS cases in Paraguay.

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