James Adams

Publications (2)9.39 Total impact

• Source

  Available from: Concer Guo

  Article: National borders effectively halt the spread of rabies: the current rabies epidemic in china is dislocated from cases in neighboring countries.

  Zhenyang Guo, Xiaoyan Tao, Cuiping Yin, Na Han, Jinning Yu, Hao Li, Haizhou Liu, Wei Fang, James Adams, Jun Wang, Guodong Liang, Qing Tang, Simon Rayner
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  ABSTRACT: China has seen a massive resurgence of rabies cases in the last 15 years with more than 25,000 human fatalities. Initial cases were reported in the southwest but are now reported in almost every province. There have been several phylogenetic investigations into the origin and spread of the virus within China but few reports investigating the impact of the epidemic on neighboring countries. We therefore collected nucleoprotein sequences from China and South East Asia and investigated their phylogenetic and phylogeographic relationship. Our results indicate that within South East Asia, isolates mainly cluster according to their geographic origin. We found evidence of sporadic exchange of strains between neighboring countries, but it appears that the major strain responsible for the current Chinese epidemic has not been exported. This suggests that national geographical boundaries and border controls are effective at halting the spread of rabies from China into adjacent regions. We further investigated the geographic structure of Chinese sequences and found that the current epidemic is dominated by variant strains that were likely present at low levels in previous domestic epidemics. We also identified epidemiological linkages between high incidence provinces consistent with observations based on surveillance data from human rabies cases.
  PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 01/2013; 7(1):e2039. · 4.69 Impact Factor
• Source

  Available from: Simon Rayner

  Article: The spatial and temporal dynamics of rabies in China.

  Jinning Yu, Hao Li, Qing Tang, Simon Rayner, Na Han, Zhenyang Guo, Haizhou Liu, James Adams, Wei Fang, Xiaoyan Tao, Shumei Wang, Guodong Liang
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  ABSTRACT: Recent years have seen a rapid increase in the number of rabies cases in China and an expansion in the geographic distribution of the virus. In spite of the seriousness of the outbreak and increasing number of fatalities, little is known about the phylogeography of the disease in China. In this study, we report an analysis of a set of Nucleocapsid sequences consisting of samples collected through the trial Chinese National Surveillance System as well as publicly available sequences. This sequence set represents the most comprehensive dataset from China to date, comprising 210 sequences (including 57 new samples) from 15 provinces and covering all epidemic regions. Using this dataset we investigated genetic diversity, patterns of distribution, and evolutionary history. Our analysis indicates that the rabies virus in China is primarily defined by two clades that exhibit distinct population subdivision and translocation patterns and that contributed to the epidemic in different ways. The younger clade originated around 1992 and has properties that closely match the observed spread of the recent epidemic. The older clade originated around 1960 and has a dispersion pattern that suggests it represents a strain associated with a previous outbreak that remained at low levels throughout the country and reemerged in the current epidemic. Our findings provide new insight into factors associated with the recent epidemic and are relevant to determining an effective policy for controlling the virus.
  PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 05/2012; 6(5):e1640. · 4.69 Impact Factor