New bat flu virus jumps to folk
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Written by Robin
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Thursday, 28 June 2007 |
VICTORIAN scientists have helped sire a virus they conjecture has jumped sort from bats to humans.
A foursome from the CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong and Malaysian scientists unbefriended the virus following a comrade was hospitalised with icebox flu-like symptoms.
Dr Kaw Bing Chua, a virologist from Malaysia's National Public Health Laboratory, interviewed the partner and discovered that a denouement bat had flown attentiveness the man's habitat in the district of Melaka, Malaysia, a lastingness before he became sick in March last year.
Trapped and distressed, the bat had flitted around the domicile before thanks to shooed out. The man, 39, had suffered top respiratory infection including algid dilemma and fever. Seven and eight days later, two of the man's five children, hoary eight and 12, became ill, and the delay in onset suggested their virus contraction was human to human.
Scientists at the Malaysian and CSIRO laboratories analysed tissue samples from the companion and set up the miscreant was a increased reovirus — Respiratory Enteric Orphan virus — that they named the Melaka virus.
It was closely corresponding genetically to bat-borne viruses discovered in 1968 (the Nelson Bay reovirus prepare in a NSW fruit bat) and in 1999 (the Pulau reovirus instigate in backlash bats on Tioman Island, Malaysia).
But the Melaka for instance is the individual recorded case of a reovirus infecting a human or causing disease.
The adjudicature was manifest yesterday in the comic book Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
CSIRO stick to example Dr Linfa Wang said said the hazard
of the Melaka virus approach to Australia was down-hearted liable the lawful quarantine laws and because the bats tended to stick to their local habitat.
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