Editor's Note #22: Two years old today..

On March 27 2013, around the time of Easter and the school holidays, I gave in to the urgings of my wife, to try this blogging thing. 

And today it's two years later and now very clear to me that writing for fun, but based around what I know in science, will be something I do for many years to come. 

At times it's been tough - or maybe other pressures made it feel tougher than it was - and I've considered stopping and have at times paused. As hard as it was though, I found myself wanting to chime in on stuff and could not stay away. I still find that weird, but it must have been a part of me all along - I just hadn't noticed it until after I turned 40'ish. I'm a bit slow sometimes. 

Turns out that I enjoy writing and I needed a hobby that I enjoy and that helped inform and generated such unexpected positive feedback. Everyone needs that I think. Bit of a shame that the typos don't get fewer but such is life. 

It also turns out that blogging made me resign from my job of 23 years - which just so happens to co-occur with this very date. No, of course my resignation was not for such a simplistic reason, but blogging was one of a few major factors that set the process in motion. In particular, blogging about outbreaks of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), avian influenza A(H7N9) virus and the Ebola virus disease epidemic in West Africa. It was that last one that really had the greatest impact on me though. 

From blogging has come more interactions with the media (something I am now a firm believer in more scientists needing to do-communicate what we do to our stakeholders), new collaborations, papers, strange discussions with affiliate Institutes about why they'd rather me not link them in print or press to this press or these papers since I had no research funding for these viruses, friendly discussions with very high ranking Health officials, advice to documentary makers and then an invited role helping out my State's public health team. That one was the kicker. The feeling that the virology information and patterns I'd spent years accruing and piecing together in my head, and now blogging about and drawing graphs and graphics to describe, could be used for the greater good completely ruined me. But in a good way. It triggered many realisations about my current role, some were familiar to me as I had been living with them daily for years, others I had felt in the corners of my mind but they were too intangible and just wouldn't coalesce into anything that would describe itself to me and yet others that were patterns I simply didn't see. Told you I was a bit slow sometimes.

You could of course dismiss all of this as the rantings of a failed scientist who - despite an h-index of 32, 80 papers (15 with >100 citations), >400 citations per year for the past 9 years, 14 book chapters, roles as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Clinical Virology, a Section Editor at Biomolecular Detection and Quantification and an Editorial board for Viruses as well as having continuous competitive research grant funding since he was awarded his PhD in 2003 until 2014 - had missed out on achieving most of his recent grant applications. Go right ahead.

I wanted to use what I'd learned for the greater good. Yeah - as a comic nerd that makes even me cringe a little. But that's where I've been heading, knowingly or not, for some years now. Well, soon I'll be a part of a team that cam help me to do that. 

So I wish you a Happy 2nd birthday little VDU. You've helped me to grow and to learn at the rate of a human two year old. And in doing so, I've met and made friends with a lot of great people around the world. For such tiny things, viruses can have such an impact on us. Quite the hobby.

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Happy 2nd birthday Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV)...

Its been 2-years since Prof. Ali Mohamed Zaki sent his email to ProMED notifying them of a novel coronavirus. That email was published 20-Sept 2012.[1] 

A year ago we had 138 cases and 58 deaths. Today we have 856 cases with perhaps 306 fatal (36%).

I won't rehash what I said a year ago - I invite you to check that out over at the 1st birthday post.[2]

Suffice to say the past year has been, to my mind anyway, mostly about:

• Camels
• High level job "shuffling"
• Controversial parallel publications
• Very problematic infection prevention and control issues.

The latter leading to the relatively huge number of MERS-CoV detections and deaths in Saudi Arabia and to some exported detections and cases. The one constant over both years has been that the MERS-CoV is a pitiful spreader among humans. MERS-CoV is nonetheless a virus that is very capable of inducing fatal outcomes, especially among older males with underlying diseases.

Has MERS-CoV gone away? No. Of course it hasn't. MERS has, mostly. That's the disease, not the virus. For now anyway MERS cases are sporadic, although still geographically widespread. 

MERS cases fell to zero cases per week for a number of weeks this year following containment of the Jeddah-2014 outbreak. Nonetheless, this is a virus of camels that seems to  spread, rarely, to humans and when in us, it has not been in any rush to mutate into the pandemic SARS-like threat many once worried about. 

Camels are where this virus likely remains. And there have been no signs that that has in any way changed. The latest information suggests camels have been harbouring MERS-CoV for at least 30-years.[3] This, as with a great deal of the research to date, is knowledge gained mostly thanks to the efforts of international research teams and their funding

So Happy 2nd Birthday you opportunistic, spiky little killer. I'm once again wishing Dr Zaki well and congratulating him on co-parenting the birth of this novel coronavirus. This year I also wish Prof. Ziad Memish well and congratulate him on seeing the infant virus through to toddler age.

Oh, and 2-years on, I still see no sign that the contentious patenting issues were any sort of hindrance to diagnostics or actual research. Just sayin'.

References...

1. http://www.promedmail.org/direct.php?id=20120920.1302733
2. Happy 1st birthday Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV)http://newsmedicalnet.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/happy-1st-birthday-middle-east.html
3. MERS Coronavirus Neutralizing Antibodies in Camels, Eastern Africa, 1983�1997
   http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/20/12/14-1026_article

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Happy Birthday rhinoviruses (RVs) - 60 years old today!

Predicted capsid model of HRV-QPM (Q=Queensland;
PM-initials of the then PhD student who did all the work).
This distinct virus is now known as HRV-C3.
It was the first HRV-C type to be sequenced,
clinically, epidemiologically and virologically
characterised and modelled. It was the third HRV-C
polyprotein sequence to be placed on  GenBank.

On September 12th 1953, the Common Cold Unit (CCU, Salisbury, United Kingdom) reported isolating the agent of the common cold in laboratory cultures. The article was authored by Dr (later Sir)Christopher Andrewes and colleagues in The Lancet.

The isolate, called D.C. after Dr Donna M. Chaproniere's donated cold sample, was only able to be grown while the lung tissue from a particular embryo remained. Once stock was exhausted, the viral culture failed. The D.C. type was not able to be characterized until 1968, by which time another variant of that type had already be given a name; RV-9.

More reliable, repeatable RV culture were achieved in 1956 Price et al (the JH type) and 1957 by Pelon et al (the 2060 type). Back at the CCU, it was found that increasing the acidity, lowering temperatures and rotating the cultures increased the success of virus isolation. The use of increased acidity was discovered by accident when CCU's Dr David Tyrrell had to replace some medium that was killing his cultures. He borrowed (as we do) others' stocks to tide him over. During this process he noted a sign of viral replication  his cultures were being killed  He eventually deduced it was because of the acidity of the new medium compared to his previous work.

 21,915 days later there have been a number of interesting developments to come from the study of RVs:

• A type is the name for a distinct RV; that type found in another patient anywhere around the world is called a variant of the type. Specific criteria now exist to define types and variants, and to identify a new HRV type.
• Recently, HRVs became RVs - the host bit was dropped but their individual names remain "HRV" and they now have the species name included e.g. HRV-A1
• There are >150 distinct RV types
• As many as 70 RV types can circulate at a single site at one study period
• The early RVs were initially classified as echoviruses (ECHO-28; later RV-1) and have also been called ERC viruses, muriviruses, Salisbury strains, coryzaviruses and enterovirus-like viruses
• RV-Cs do not grow using any routinely used cell culture lines, but can be grown in primary tissues and differentiated multilayer cell cultures at the air-liquid interface
• RVs are the most frequent virus to be detected in children and adults with acute upper respiratory tract infections including the "common cold"
• RV infection of adult chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ( COPD) patients may precipate outgrowth of Haemophilus influenzae, not seen among healthy RV infectees
• RVs are also associated with fever and influenza-like illness (ILI), where and they can be near impossible to discriminate from some ILIs without laboratory testing
• RVs are the viruses most frequently detected in wheezing exacerbations ("attacks") in those with asthma where they, more than any other virus, seem to take advantage of antiviral immune deficiencies. While RV-Cs appear to be more exacerbatory, I personally believe this is just an artefact of small, short studies
• RVs are found more often than other viruses in people without overt signs of respiratory disease; but as a proportion of all viruses, RVs are less often found in well people compared to most other respiratory viruses. 
• RVs do not persist (a given RV type is not detected beyond 2-4 weeks) except in those with serious immune deficiency such as those undergoing lung transplant
• There used to be a genus Rhinovirus, but that was abolished and now the three RV species (A, B, C) sit under the genus Enterovirus
• There is no vaccine or broadly available antiviral for HRVs although both are being actively researched now.
• Prior to the use of PCR to detect RVs in 1988/1989, epidemiology studies looking at the impact of a specific respiratory could not account for 50+ HRV-Cs (and perhaps some fastidious HRV-As and Bs)
• RV-Bs are considered "wimps" by those in the know and they are always under-represented when found i.e they appear to circulate in smaller numbers than chance would dictate they should

So, many happy returns little guys. Long may you educate our immune systems with your constant challenges, long may you interfere with the seasons of other viruses and long may you make me write silly titles for reviews when under your mind-altering influence (that's my excuse anyway). 

Much may have been written about other respiratory viruses over the years, but the HRVs are always with us, always challenging us and always causing problems for us. To study RVs is to study all respiratory viruses and diseases of the upper and lower respiratory tract. To exclude them from study or test is to fail to understand these diseases.

Some literature...

1. Hilding,A. The Common Cold. Arch Otolaryngol. Head Neck Surg. 12, 133-150 (1930). 
2. Tyrrell,D.A.J. & Fielder,M. Cold wars: The fight against the common cold (Oxford University Press, New York, 2002).
3. Propagation of common-cold virus in tissue cultures.
4. Outgrowth of the Bacterial Airway Microbiome following Rhinovirus Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
5. Newly identified respiratory viruses in children with asthma exacerbation not requiring admission to hospital.
6. Newly identified human rhinoviruses: molecular methods heat up the cold viruses.
7. Human rhinoviruses: coming in from the cold.
8. Do rhinoviruses reduce the probability of viral co-detection during acute respiratory tract infections?
9. Molecular characterization and distinguishing features of a novel human rhinovirus (HRV) C, HRVC-QCE, detected in children with fever, cough and wheeze during 2003.
10. Prior evidence of putative novel rhinovirus species, Australia.
11. Human rhinoviruses: the cold wars resume.
12. Distinguishing molecular features and clinical characteristics of a putative new rhinovirus species, human rhinovirus C (HRV C).
13. Frequent detection of human rhinoviruses, paramyxoviruses, coronaviruses, and bocavirus during acute respiratory tract infections.

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