..or pretty much any other animal that may, although we have no data to support it (except for bats but no-one seems to think their is much chance of bat-human spread being the main source), be infected by the MERS-CoV and acting as a source for human infections if in fact the results from today's Lancet article are...
Experts completely surprised and baffled yet again...
...by the word "exuent". Hey, I went to a lot of different schools. It's a word I have now absorbed thanks to a very amusing blog post by Crawford Kilian over at crofsblogs that offers an opinion about the +Func studies we all wrote about yesterday. Do have a read. Keep calm and read Crof. There must be a mug in that.Exuent Mackay, screen le...
Influenza A(H7N9) virus detected by local labs: Guangdong province...awaiting CDPCC confirmation
Not long ago, FluTrackers posted a thread starting with an ifeng news of a 51-year old woman who has tested positive for H7N9 Guangdong province, southern China. This is the province's first human case. She has influenza-like illness, contact with 36 people and with poultry.The case was identified...
Camels carry signs of coronavirus contagion
Reusken and a European collaborative team have this morning described the first study looking for evidence of prior infection with the MERS-CoV, in animals. This evidence take the form of antibodies (immunoglobulin G or IgG ) made after the animal's immune system recognizes and then defends against future infection by that invader. The...
Ian Lipkin has samples from animals for testing...and the hunt is away, like camels racing in the desert!
In a couple of Tweets from Jennifer Yang (@jyangstar; who writes for the Toronto Star) this morning, and from her article on MERS-CoV antibodies in camels, we heard some very encouraging news on the hunt for MERS-CoV origins and sources. One of the world's best virus hunters, Prof Ian Lipkin, has received 130 samples from animals and the molecular investigations to discover and characterise...
The +Func H7N9 proposal...is there such a thing as Loss of Function experiments?
As I noted earlier today - VDU declares Gain of Function day (+Func), reflecting the release of an open letter declaring the intentions of leading influenza researchers to seek approvals to conduct experiments on avian influenza A(H7N9) virus. These include changes to the virus which would likely create 1 or more related, but new, and possibly much better replicating and transmitting...
Infection Prevention and Control measures for MERS..mostly as per other ARIs
Thanks to Mike Coston for help and tips.Cases are few and details are incomplete but the authors of an article in the recent MERS-centric issue of the EMRO Journal, recommend following the basic protocols you would to suppress spread of any virus capable of causing an acute respiratory infection (ARI) with a leaning towards those that worked well to interrupt hospital-based spread of severe acute...
It's Gain of Function (+Func) day!!!
I don't have the time to review it all until I'm away form my day job desk, but there is a storm of commentary on the recent Letter by Ron Fouchier, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, and the otherwise alphabetically listed band of merry influenza (and other viruses) field-leaders.The Letter, informs the world of their intent to propose some new gain of function experiments (+Func I'm calling it!). These will...
Tracking MERS-CoV through time: a spikey problem
This morning on Twitter, Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) asked this question, with a comment...How is this so? 16 months after the 1st known #MERS cases, there are only 9 viral sequences in the public domain. So much for collaboration.� Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) August 6, 2013So I thought...
A detailed report of a Jiangsu H7N9 infection family cluster and the probable involvement of human-to-human transmission
Qi and colleagues describe in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), their detailed analysis of a likely human-to-human (h2h) transmission event by influenza A(H7N9) virus. The infection is likely to have traveled a 60-year old father to his 32-year old daughter, but not to any close contacts-1 "passage" of transmission. This event was previously defined as...
Time for the bat signal? The need for an animal model for Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus.
Elizabeth Devitt notes in Nature Medicine, that unlike its cousin, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), some important features of MERS-CoV including its transmission, incubation period, and ability to spread systemically within the host, have not been able to be defined for the MERS-CoV using non-human models, because the virus does not...
Memories of H7N9....
The Annals of Internal Medicine has an article by Andrew Pavia that summarizes some of the key events in the influenza A(H7N9) virus outbreak earlier this year, asking "Should we be concerned?". The question is not specifically answered, rather we are reminded that H7N9 has the ingredients with which we could bake a very good pandemic.It faces a population with little or no immunity;H7N9 seems to...
Rhinoviruses (HRVs) in the blood reflect more HRV in the nasopharynx and worse disease...
Of late we have heard quite a it about systemic viruses viruses of the nose, throat and lungs, so-called respiratory viruses. In this context, we're taking about the spread of respiratory viruses beyond their expected site of infection and disease...the respiratory tract...and into the blood or extra-respiratory tissues and organs including the kidney, liver, brain etc. We tend to see this...
MERS-CoV: Family cluster, untested case, delayed reporting, missing data
Hat tip to Crof's story for drawing my attention to this article.Omrani and colleagues describe a family cluster of Middle East Respiratory Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infections. The study, from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health (KSA MOH) is interesting for a few reasons:The first case (51-year old male with type II diabetes; 51M) is believed to have acquired the infection while...
