Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome Outbreak, Brazil, December 2009–January 2010

Ana Cláudia Pereira Terças

, Marina Atanaka dos Santos, Marta Gislene Pignatti, Mariano Martinez Espinosa, Alba Valéria Gomes de Melo Via, and Jaqueline Aparecida Menegatti

Author affiliations: Federal University of Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, Brazil (A.C.P. Terças, M.A. dos Santos, M.G. Pignatti, M.M. Espinosa); University Center Cândido Rondon, Cuiabá (A.C.P. Terças); State Secretary of Health of Mato Grosso, Cuiabá (A.V.G. de Melo Via, J.A. Menegatti)

Abstract

An outbreak of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome occurred in the Sobradinho Indian settlement of the Kayabí ethnic group in northern Mato Grosso during December 2009–January 2010. We conducted a retrospective study to clarify the outbreak’s epidemiologic and clinical characteristics. Results suggest a relationship between the outbreak and deforestation and farming expansion in indigenous areas.

Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) was first identified in 1993 in the semi-arid southwestern region of the United States known as the Four Corners (1,2). This manifestation occurred in the form of an outbreak of the Sin Nombre virus in a community of Navajo Indians.
HPS is associated with American wild rodents of the family Cricetidae. Members of the the Sigmodontinae subfamily serve as rodent reservoirs of hantaviruses, and persons become infected mainly through inhaling rodent secretions and aerosolized excreta (3–5). Propitious ecologic conditions such as social, economic, and spatial factors facilitate the initiation and maintenance of the disease and determine its emergence (6–7).
In Brazil, areas of deforestation and environmental change, which have resulted from economic growth and agricultural production in the past 20 years, has had an effect on the number of HPS cases (8,9). In Mato Grosso, the first HPS cases were recorded in 1999 in the city of Campo Novo do Parecis, where the Castelo dos Sonhos and Laguna Negra viral strains were identified (9). According to the State Health Secretary of Mato Grosso, 203 cases were registered from 1999 to 2010; the death rate was 42.8%.
An outbreak of identified HPS cases occurred in the Sobradinho Indian settlement of the Kayabí ethnic group within the Xingu Indigenous Park in northern Mato Grosso during December 2009–January 2010. We conducted a retrospective study to clarify the epidemiologic and clinical characteristics of the outbreak.