A new case in an 82-year old male (82M), the 3rd in the United Arab Emirates (3.7% of cases). The previous 2 having been diagnosed externally, but seeming to have originated from the UAE.This brings the MERS-CoV case total worldwide to 82 including 45 deaths; a (PFC of 54.9%. Of those with data, 66% of case are male as are 76% of fatalities. Of those cases with age data available, 49% =60-years (ratio...
Another H7N9-in-ferrets paper.
This was on my "to read" pile and got moved to the "forgot to read" pile.Kreijtz and colleagues from the Osterhaus group described inoculating ferrets intratracheally with 105-108 50% tissue culture infective doses influenza A(H7N9) virus A/Anhui/1/2013. Some interesting results include...Ferrets showed much more pathology than in the studies below; from 2-days onwards ferrets had breathing difficulties...
Where is sialic acid in different animals?
Some reviews (this and this) from a year or more ago went into this question. Tabulated for some animals below. There often seems to be at least some of the non-dominant receptor in each tissue so thing are not all or nothing.HostSialosideTissues expressing most of it..Humana2,3Eye, conjunctivae, tear duct, ciliated respiratory cells (minority) including cuboidal bronchiolar cells, type II pneumocytesHumana2,6Non-ciliated...
Do "asymptomatic" animals tell us anything about a virus?
Are animals that get inoculated with a known quantity of infectious virus, but that don't seroconvert (produce antibodies) or host any viral replication, considered to be asymptomatic? Can we define that state in animals and if not, why n...
H7N9 less efficient by droplet - but occurred in over 30% of ferrets.
Belser and colleagues from Tumpey's group describe their findings after putting two H7N9 viruses (A/Anhui/1/2013 and A/Shanghai/1/2013) into mice and ferrets. Some highlights from the Nature paper released yesterday... Mice inoculated intranasally showed greater disease with human than with avian H7N9 virus Ferrets inoculated intranasally (106 plaque-forming units) did not generally show...
New H7N9 numbers and Case Fatality Rate/Ratio/Risk [UPDATEDx2]
The latest Influenza A(H7N9) virus numbers are out and we can see the deaths have ticked up. We have no public information on these or many of the past releases either. With 132 cases (presumably this still does not include the Taiwan case or the asymptomatic Beijing boy, so I maintain 134) with 43 deaths.My data (which suffer from the public reporting process; I do not mean to imply that WHO or other...
