Posted on 07/09/2009 12:15:12 PM PDT by dan_s
Don't worry, it can't hurt you—yet.
Scientists have identified Reston ebolavirus—a member of the deadly Ebola group of hemorrhagic viruses—in domestic swine from the Philippines.
The virus, which looks like a piece of yarn with a slight bend, is the only Ebola pathogen not known to cause disease in humans. Even so, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta considers it a biosafety level 4 pathogen, reserved for the most dangerous and exotic diseases.
Ebola and the closely related Marburg viruses are highly contagious, causing vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding with death rates as high as 90 percent. These viruses, originally from Africa, are thought to be caught from close contact with monkeys and apes, their primary hosts, although they have also been isolated from bats that show no symptoms.
Indeed, Reston ebolavirus was first identified in 1989 in crab-eating macaque monkeys that were shipped from the Philippines for research in Reston, Va. Human caretakers developed an immune response to the virus, but they never came down with any symptoms.
The latest outbreak of the Ebola family was discovered in July 2008 as the Philippine Department of Agriculture was investigating "blue ear disease" in pigs, a respiratory condition that causes their ears to turn blue from lack of oxygen. Investigators sent tissue and blood samples to Michael McIntosh at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in Greenport, N.Y.
McIntosh says he was surprised to find that the tissue samples also contained the Reston strain, which had not been previously identified in swine. His team also confirmed pig-to-human Ebola transmission by identifying six pig handlers, whose blood tested positive for antibodies to the virus, although they showed no symptoms. Manila had announced preliminary findings in January, and McIntosh's study is published in this week's Science.
McIntosh says there are still a lot of unknowns, including how the virus was transmitted to the pigs and whether they show any symptoms independent of blue ear disease. He worries that the virus's passage through pigs could allow it to mutate into something more harmful. The research also raises the possibility that pigs could be infected with lethal Ebola strains. "What is the level of risk? We really don't know," he says, "The fact that it shows up in domestic pigs raises that risk."
Humans may give swine flu to pigs in new twist to pandemic
(Excerpted)
The strain of influenza, A/H1N1, that is currently pandemic in humans has been shown to be infectious to pigs and to spread rapidly in a trial pig population.
In research published today in Journal of General Virology, Dr Thomas Vahlenkamp and a team of virologists from the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut in Greifswald-Insel Riems, Germany, experimentally infected five pigs with the strain of swine flu that is causing the current human pandemic. Within four days the virus had spread to three un-infected pigs housed with the infected ones and all pigs were showing clinical signs of swine flu.
“Although in the early stages of the swine flu pandemic there were worries that humans would catch the virus from pigs, this has so far not been documented and pigs and other animals have not been involved in the current spread of A/H1N1 influenza in humans,” said Dr Vahlenkamp, “However, with the increasing numbers of human infections, a spill over of this human virus to pigs is becoming more likely.
The prevention of human-to-pig transmissions should have a high priority in order to avoid involvement of pigs in the epidemiology of this pandemic”.
Although the virus spread quickly to the non-infected pigs, it did not spread to five chickens that were housed together with the pigs.
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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-07/sfgm-hmg070809.php
Yes , you are correct . The swine flu is causing vomiting and diarrhea in some patients .
Thu Jul 9, 2009 6:40pm EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - Fourteen Britons who had contracted H1N1 flu have died and the rapid spread of infection in two areas of the country is close to epidemic level, health officials said on Thursday.
The Department of Health said Britain now had 9,718 laboratory-confirmed cases, the third most in the world behind the United States and Mexico.
Britain's Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson said the actual number of cases was likely to be higher.
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