Google ORG blog :
A Deadly New ArenavirusExcerpts:
On September 12 2008, Cecilia van Deventer, a safari booking agent
living in Zambia, was flown to South Africa in critical condition. She
died just two days later. By October 6 2008, three more people had
died: the paramedic who accompanied Cecilia to South Africa, the nurse
who cared for her in Intensive Care, and the cleaner who cleaned her
hospital room after her death. A fifth patient, a nurse who cared for
the infected paramedic, is receiving anti-viral treatment. In all
cases, people infected were exposed to infected blood and/or body
fluids.
South Africa's
National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US-CDC) quickly identified the infectious agent as an
arenavirus similar to the one that causes
Lassa Fever- a disease that affects 500 000 people per year in West Africa. Now,
following full sequencing of the viral genome by Professor Ian Lipkin
and colleagues at the
Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University, it has been clearly shown that this is an arenavirus that has
never been seen before. Google.org's Predict and Prevent initiative
recently announceda grant of $2.5 million to support CII's work in pathogen discovery.
This identification of a novel arenavirus not only represents an early
success, but also demonstrates just why this work is so important.
'There is no doubt we are dealing with a newly emerged virus,' said Dr.
Janusz Paweska, head of the special pathology unit at the NICD in
Johannesburg. As Professor Robert Swanepoel, also of the NICD, has
pointed out, the virus is 'newly-discovered' rather than new, and has
probably been around in animal populations for some time before making
a recent jump to humans.
Arenaviruses, normally transferred to
humans through contact with the urine of their rodent hosts, can be
classified into New and Old World viruses depending on whether they
originate in the Western or Eastern hemisphere respectively. New World
arenaviruses, including
Junin,
Machupo,
Sabia and
Guanarito, can cause
viral hemorrhagic fever.
This particular virus, classified as Old World due to its African
origins, began as a flu-like illness, then caused diarrhea, pharyngitis
and a rash before rapidly culminating in respiratory distress,
neurological symptoms and
circulatory collapse over a period of about 9-12 days. The virus has yet to receive a name.
Due to the swift action of the NICD, US-CDC and CII the outbreak is now described as contained. We commend their efforts!
Click
here to read the original article
