Emerging Virus Diseases Research Articles

Infectious Risks, Universal Hygiene and Occupational Risks for Tattooing Technicians.

Emerging virus diseases are a major threat to humans and public health. Over the past two decades, there has been mounting interest in the increasing number of viruses causing unexpected illnesses and epidemics among humans. Emerging diseases also include as yet unrecognisable infections, or a previously recognised infection that has expanded into new ecological niche often accompanied by a significant change in pathogenicity. In the wake of these discoveries, the need for stronger infection prevention measures for personal services such as tattooing and cosmetic tattooing procedures needs to be revisited and re-established through more rigorous measures. This study provides an overview of some of the more common viruses and highlights their covert and sometimes non-symptomatic nature that tattooing practitioners need to be mindful of. It also presents precautionary measures that practitioners must take to protect against cross-contamination through infection prevention protocols. This study also looks at the importance of education and updates in education and the role of mandatory regulations.

Purple: A Computational Workflow for Strategic Selection of Peptides for Viral Diagnostics Using MS-Based Targeted Proteomics.

Emerging virus diseases present a global threat to public health. To detect viral pathogens in time-critical scenarios, accurate and fast diagnostic assays are required. Such assays can now be established using mass spectrometry-based targeted proteomics, by which viral proteins can be rapidly detected from complex samples down to the strain-level with high sensitivity and reproducibility. Developing such targeted assays involves tedious steps of peptide candidate selection, peptide synthesis, and assay optimization. Peptide selection requires extensive preprocessing by comparing candidate peptides against a large search space of background proteins. Here we present Purple (Picking unique relevant peptides for viral experiments), a software tool for selecting target-specific peptide candidates directly from given proteome sequence data. It comes with an intuitive graphical user interface, various parameter options and a threshold-based filtering strategy for homologous sequences. Purple enables peptide candidate selection across various taxonomic levels and filtering against backgrounds of varying complexity. Its functionality is demonstrated using data from different virus species and strains. Our software enables to build taxon-specific targeted assays and paves the way to time-efficient and robust viral diagnostics using targeted proteomics.

What treating Ebola means for pandemic influenza.

Almost all new treatments being developed for the next influenza pandemic target the virus. During the Ebola crisis in West Africa, patients were treated with an inexpensive generic statin/angiotensin receptor blocker combination that appeared to greatly improve survival. These drugs target the host response, not the virus, and probably reverse endothelial dysfunction. Scientists and health officials have shown little interest in this idea. Yet, during the early months of the next pandemic, vaccines will be unavailable and treatment options will be limited. Physicians should be prepared to undertake clinical trials of widely available generic drugs to determine whether they improve survival in patients with seasonal influenza, other emerging virus diseases, and other forms of acute critical illness. Public health officials should give these studies their strong support. If successful, they will suggest a ‘bottom up’ approach to patient care that could be implemented worldwide on the first pandemic day.

Observational studies help us understand how to treat pandemic influenza and other emerging virus diseases

In his editorial, Zhang (1) comments on my earlier article that suggested inexpensive and widely available generic drugs might be used to reduce mortality from pandemic influenza, Ebola and other emerging virus diseases (2). He notes that several earlier studies explored the possibility that statins might be used to treat patients with sepsis and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) (1). Many individual observational studies [for example, (3)] and their meta-analyses (4) have suggested that statins might be effective in these patients, but several randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have failed to demonstrate their efficacy (5,6). Critical care specialists, many of them involved in these RCTs, have expressed different opinions on whether statins should still be considered potentially useful (7-9). In my view, the question is still open; the RCTs were conducted in mechanically ventilated ICU patients, and many of these patients were started on treatment late in the course of illness. Thus, statin treatment by itself may have been “too little, too late”. Nonetheless, the experimental and clinical rationale for this general approach to treating the host response in patients with critical illness is still persuasive. For many reasons, it must be further explored (2).

Potential application of electronic healthcare records to the effectiveness study of the treatment of emerging virus diseases

In a long review article entitled “Treating the host response to emerging virus diseases: lessons learned from sepsis, pneumonia, influenza and Ebola”, Fedson provided insightful thoughts on the development of effective treatment drugs for emerging virus diseases (1). Since the development of novel drugs targeting each of the emerging viruses are costly, the target to the host response which is a common final pathway for the pathogenesis of virus diseases, would be a promising target. The author enumerated some successful drugs such as the statins and angiotensin receptor blockers. No matter what the upstream causes it is, the host responses to virus infection share the same mechanisms such as endothelial dysfunction, over-activation of the immune system. However, these potentially attractive drugs have not been proven to be effective in reducing mortality outcomes. In patients with acute respiratory distress (ARDS) and/or sepsis, none of the randomized controlled trials have reported the efficacy of statin in reducing mortality (2-4), though the statin was found to be safe in these patient populations. The futility of these trials may be attributable to the low dose and late initiation. In a study, the statin was initiated for a mean of eight days after mechanical ventilation (3).

Abstract 12496: A New Arrhythmic Threat to America. Chikungunya Myocarditis

Background: The mosquito-borne Chikungunya virus infection is one of the most important emerging virus diseases globally. Local transmission has been found in the United States. There are very few published reports concerning the cardiac complications in general and less of arrhythmias in particular. Chikungunya can be fatal: there have been sudden deaths reports . Objective: To investigate arrhythmic complications of Chikungunya myocarditis. Methods: Prospective multicenter observational study of 280 patients with a Chikunguya infection from a Venezuelan Outbreak. Clinical evaluation, ECG, laboratory including virological evaluation and cardiac biomarkers, Echocardiogram, Holter and cardiac MRI procedures were carried out. Results: Of the 280 patients examined, 113 patients were male, with a mean age of 59 ± 9; 270 patients presented with fever and polyarthralgia and 85 developed palpitations. Arrhythmias occured in 45% of cases; they included bradyarrhythmias (33%), atrial and ventricular ectopic beats and tachyarrhythmias in which atrial fibrillation was observed in 19 cases. There were also ectopic atrial tachycardia and non sustained ventricular tachycardia, conduction disturbances and 3 cases of sudden death. Conclusion: Physicians should know that almost half of the Chikungunya patients will develop arrhythmias and manifest or silent myocarditis. In the proper epidemiological context, the triad of fever, polyarthralgia and new arrhythmia including bradiarrhythmias suggest Chikungunya Myocarditis.

Emerging Virus Diseases Transmitted by Whiteflies

Virus diseases that have emerged in the past two decades limit the production of important vegetable crops in tropical, subtropical, and temperate regions worldwide, and many of the causal viruses are transmitted by whiteflies (order Hemiptera, family Aleyrodidae). Most of these whitefly-transmitted viruses are begomoviruses (family Geminiviridae), although whiteflies are also vectors of criniviruses, ipomoviruses, torradoviruses, and some carlaviruses. Factors driving the emergence and establishment of whitefly-transmitted diseases include genetic changes in the virus through mutation and recombination, changes in the vector populations coupled with polyphagy of the main vector, Bemisia tabaci, and long distance traffic of plant material or vector insects due to trade of vegetables and ornamental plants. The role of humans in increasing the emergence of virus diseases is obvious, and the effect that climate change may have in the future is unclear.

Examples of emerging virus diseases in salmonid aquaculture

Aquaculture can offer close to ideal environments for the spread of infectious diseases. Owing to high-density monoculture of hosts, numerous possible routes of transmission and suboptimal protection by available vaccination for several viral diseases, viruses may thrive in modern salmonid aquaculture. Furthermore, infectious diseases do not respect national boundaries and they can have detrimental effects both on the production and on the export of aquaculture products. Effective vaccines are available for only a limited number of serious fish viral diseases, leaving expensive compulsory stamping-out eradication as the official approach. If fish health authorities do not have an efficient risk management procedure, outbreaks may become epizootics. The key to control viral epidemics is to block the transmission of infection. This requires knowledge about reservoirs, susceptibility of infection for the different species of fish, the pattern of shedding of virus and survival of viral infectivity outside the host. The development of highly effective vaccines offers another way of preventing and controlling future risks.

Dengue in Travellers Is Still Underestimated

Background: Dengue fever (DF), one of the main emerging virus diseases, also increases in German travellers, due to the increasing number of travellers to tropical regions. Methods: We determined antibodies against DF virus in a group (n = 149) of long-distance travellers in order to evaluate the risk of acquiring DF. Serum samples were collected at the travel vaccination centre in Frankfurt/Main and DF seroprevalence in serum samples was determined using different antibody assays with particular attention to flavivirus cross-reactivity. So, antibodies against tick-borne encephalitis and previous flavivirus vaccination of the travellers were checked. Results: Depending on the test system, 8.7–19.5% of the screened travellers were found to be DF virus IgG antibody positive, significantly more than in previous investigations. Remarkably, younger adults and women are more often affected. Conclusions: These data imply that the risk for travellers to acquire DF has been underestimated. Nevertheless, dengue haemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome are still rare in travellers, but those with a history of dengue should be advised to protect themselves well from mosquitoes when travelling to endemic areas.

Oliveros Virus: A Novel Arenavirus from Argentina

During the past few decades several newly recognized rodent-borne arenaviruses have been shown to be associated with severe hemorrhagic fever cases in South America. Changes in ecology and farming practices throughout the region have increased the concern over the potential public health threat posed by such emerging virus diseases. Oliveros (OLV) virus is a recently discovered arenavirus of the rodentBolomys obscurusin Argentina. Genetic analysis of the small genomic RNA segment, which encodes the nucleocapsid protein and the envelope glycoproteins, shows that Oliveros is a novel, phylogenetically distinct member of theArenaviridaefamily which differs in nucleotide sequence from the previously characterized members by approximately 35% or more. Despite this level of diversity, OLV virus possesses the same ambisense genome structure and many overall RNA and protein features in common with other arenaviruses. These data represent an important first step in the development of specific immunological and PCR diagnostic reagents to allow assessment of the prevalence and disease potential of this virus.

WHO program on emerging virus diseases.

Infectious diseases, and especially viral diseases, are important, evolving complex public health problems. Their ultimate prevention and control will increasingly require sophisticated interaction between epidemiologic resources, molecular expertise, and application of modern statistical tools. The integration of epidemiologic and laboratory sciences is central to the success of a coordinated approach to new, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, and the WHO is attempting to facilitate and strengthen these resources internationally by focusing on improved surveillance, infrastructure building, applied research, and improved prevention and control strategies. Reference virus laboratories, especially those that deal with exotic virus diseases, will play a key role in implementation of the program, since these laboratories are likely to be called upon to assist in the identification of new, emerging, or re-emerging diseases. Thus, ensuring that these laboratories are well prepared to perform their critical tasks is essential to the ultimate success of the program.

The emergence of new virus diseases: an overview

From experience, we know that many different elements can contribute to the emergence of a new virus disease; these include virologic determinants [such as mutation, recombination, reassortment (drift and shift), natural selection, fitness adaptation, evolutionary progressional], natural influences (such as ecologic, environmental and zoonotic influences) and factors pertaining to human activity (such as behavioral, societal, transport, commercial and iatrogenic factors). In general, there is no way to predict when or where the next important new viral pathogen will emerge; neither is there any way to reliably predict the ultimate importance of a virus as it first emerges. Given this reality, initial investigation at the first sign of the emergence of a new virus disease must focus on characteristics such as mortality, severity of disease, transmissibility, and remote spread, all of which are important predictors of epidemic potential and societal threat. Clinical observations, pathologic examinations and preliminary virus identification and characterization often provide early clues, since new, emerging viruses often resemble their closest genetic relatives in regard to their epidemiologic and pathogenetic characteristics. Development of a global surveillance/diagnostics/communications network is needed, but this, in turn, must be linked to a global action network. This network must be designed to be flexible; capable, for example, in one instance of emphasizing local professional infrastructure development, and in the next of emphasizing global epidemic aid. Given the nature and magnitude of the threat represented by new and emerging virus diseases, the development of a global surveillance/action network is, indeed, a worthy goal for national and international public health authorities.