Generally, in Ethiopian highlands, rodent abundance peaks more during the post-rainy season than the dry season during years of good rains. blood samples. Total orthohantavirus prevalence (antibodies or virus RNA) in the small mammals was 3.37%. The positive animals were three rats (prevalence in this species = 13.04%). The low prevalence made it impossible to determine whether season and stone bunds were associated with orthohantavirus prevalence in the small mammals. In humans, we report the first detection of orthohantavirus-reactive IgG antibodies in Ethiopia (seroprevalence = 5.26%). lives in close proximity to humans, likely increasing the risk of zoonotic transmission. Keywords: orthohantavirus, rodents, rural community, risk factors, Ethiopia 1. Introduction Orthohantaviruses (family was isolated from Guinea [5], several novel orthohantavirus strains have been isolated or identified in Africa, including Seoul orthohantavirus in wild roof rats (and 0.05. Statistical analyses were carried out using STATA, ver. 14. 3. Results 3.1. Composition of Small Mammals We captured a total of 104 small mammals, 56 in Atsbi and 48 in Hagere Selam. The small mammals belonged to seven rodent and one shrew species (Table 2). In Atsbi (characterized by higher densities of total and medium-sized stone bunds outside the village and longer length of overall and big-sized stone bunds in the village and medium- and big-sized stone bunds outside the village), the African grass rat (formerly [25]) was the most abundant species (25; 44.6%). In contrast, in Hagere Selam (characterized by higher densities of total and big-sized stone bunds in the village and higher density and longer length of stone bunds outside the village), the white-footed Ethiopian rat (14; 29.2%). We captured nine individuals of the white-footed Ethiopian rat in Atsbi. While more (18) small Vernakalant HCl mammals were captured in the high stone bund density fields than Vernakalant HCl in the low stone bund density fields (10) in Atsbi (Table Vernakalant HCl 2), an almost equal number of small mammals were captured in the high and low stone bund density fields (19 and 20, respectively) in Hagere Selam. While we captured more small mammals in the dry season (36) than in the post-rainy season (20) in Atsbi, there was an equal number of small mammals (24) captured in the dry and post-rainy seasons in Hagere Selam (Table 3). Table 2 Abundance (number of individual captures) of small mammals in the low stone bund density (LSBD) and high stone bund density (HSBD) fields and in the enclosures in Atsbi and Hagere Selam. Numbers in parentheses indicate relative abundances (%) of each species per study area. were found to contain antibodies that reacted with PUUV, resulting in a seroprevalence of 2.25% in the total study population. In Hagere Selam (where more white-footed Ethiopian rats were captured), the seroprevalence was 5.26% compared to 0% in Atsbi. Considering seroprevalence only for the white-footed Ethiopian rat, one of the two known hosts of TIGV to date [15], seroprevalence was 8.69% (2/23) in the Vernakalant HCl total white-footed Ethiopian rat population and 14.28% (2/14) for the same species captured only in Hagere Selam. The positive individuals were a lactating adult female (body mass 92 g) and a sub-adult female (body mass 29 g) captured in the post-rainy and dry seasons, Vernakalant HCl respectively, in the same HSBD field in Hagere Selam. The field was covered with wheat crop during the post-rainy season but left fallow during the dry season. The RT-PCR analysis of the 89 samples resulted in one positive sample, in addition to the two antibody-positive samples. The obtained Bmp3 sequence showed only one synonymous mutation compared to Tigray orthohantavirus strain 97 (GenBank AN: JQ956486) found in in Hagere Selam nine years before [7]. The new sequence was deposited in GenBank (AN: MK875671). The positive individual was = 0.03). Neither the sex distribution (2 = 0.037, df = 2, = 0.8) nor the age distribution.