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EXPERIMENTAL AND NATURAL INFECTION OF NORTH AMERICAN BATS WITH WEST NILE VIRUS

Big brown (Eptesicus fuscus) and Mexican free-tailed (Tadarida brasiliensis) bats were inoculated with the New York 99 strain of West Nile virus to assess their potential to serve as amplifying hosts and determine the clinical effect of infection. Groups of three or four bats were bled at daily intervals between 1 and 6 days after inoculation to determine the pattern of viremia. Beginning 2 days after inoculation, virus was isolated each day from one or more E. fuscus bats, in titers ranging from 10 to 180 plaque-forming units per milliliter of serum. Virus was not isolated from any of the sera collected from T. brasiliensis bats. None of the bats from either species showed clinical signs associated with exposure to virus. Sera from an additional 149 bats collected in Louisiana in 2002 during an epizootic of West Nile fever were tested for antibodies to virus, and two were found to be positive. These data suggest that bats from these two widely distributed species are unlikely to serve as amplifying hosts for West Nile virus.

Received September 30, 2004. Accepted for publication April 2, 2005.

Acknowledgments: Appreciation is extended to Dr. Tom O’Shea and student assistants for providing the Eptesicus bats, to personnel from the Louisiana Department of Health for assistance in bleeding bats in Louisiana and to Dr. Nick Komar for reviewing the manuscript.

This study was supported in part by NIH contract NO1-AI25489. Dr. Blitvich was supported in part by grant U50 CCU820510 from the CDC and grant AI45430 from NIH.

^* Address correspondence to Richard Bowen, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523. E-mail: rbowen{at}colostate.edu

Authors’ addresses: April Davis, Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, E-mail: April.Davis{at}colostate.edu. Michel Bunning, Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, P.O. Box 2087, Fort Collins, CO 80522, E-mail: zyd7{at}cdc.gov. Paul Gordy, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, E-mail: pgordy{at}colostate.edu. Nicholas Panella, Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, P.O. Box 2087, Fort Collins, CO 80522, E-mail: nap4{at}cdc.gov. Bradley Blitvich, Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, E-mail: blitvich{at}colostate.edu. Richard Bowen, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, Telephone: (970) 491-5768, Fax: (970) 491-3557, E-mail: rbowen{at}colostate.edu.

Reprint requests: Richard Bowen, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, E-mail: rbowen{at}colostate.edu.

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