ViroBlogy

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

We’ve all heard the myths and hypotheses about the origins of the epidemic caused by the HI virus, but a new book, “Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It”, sheds more light on where it all began.

I’ve covered this before, but it’s a nice review – complete with spoilers like how Beatrice Hahn and team have shown that a chimpanzee SIV from Cameroon is the closest relative of HIV-1 group M viruses.  The gun doesn’t smoke more than that.

See on www.plusnews.org

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

CIO TodayReligious sites ‘riskier than porn for viruses’NinemsnWeb wanderers are more likely to get a computer virus by visiting a religious website than by peering at porn, according to a study released on Tuesday.

I love it: Dawkins was right!  Religion IS a virus….

See on news.dc1.ninemsn.com.au

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

“On April 27th, after much toing and froing, the Dutch government gave Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam permission to submit his paper on bird flu to Science.”

And so it FINALLY comes to pass – two papers that SHOULD have been published weeks ago, finally see the light.

See on 9thlevel.ie

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

“It’s finally out. After months of will-they-won’t they and should-they-shouldn’t-they deliberations, Nature has finally published a paper about a mutant strain of bird flu that can spread between mammals.”

This is the Kawaoka paper, which in fact was the LESS contentious one.  Ed Yong in Discover magazine comes up with four important themes from the paper, which to my mind show we were right to agitate and demand that the material be published.

One: H5N1 can evolve to spread between mammals with worrying ease

Two: There appear to be two traits that make for a transmissible virus – specificity and stability.

Three: It’s not the mutations that matter, but what they do. Or, don’t miss the wood for the trees.

Four: Wild viruses are almost there.

One and four are the important points: flu viruses can evolve quickly and easily, and wild H5N1 is nearly at the point that it will leap into mammals.  The virus is endemic in several countries, like Indonesia, where wild birds, tame birds, pigs and people rub shoulders on a daily basis: this is a natural melting pot for influenza virus reassortment and adaptation, that may at any moment see a pandemic virus burst out.

Or not – it may as easily be a H7NX virus that will be The Big One.

But it is as well to be prepared – and censorship wasn’t going to allow that.

Thanks @AJCann for alerting me to this.

See on blogs.discovermagazine.com

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) differ from typical retroviruses in being inherited through the host germline and therefore are a unique combination of pathogen and selfish genetic element. Some ERV lineages proliferate by infecting germline cells, as do typical retroviruses, whereas others lack the env gene required for virions to enter cells and thus behave like retrotransposons. We wished to know what factors determined the relative abundance of different ERV lineages, so we analyzed ERV loci recovered from 38 mammal genomes by in silico screening. By modeling the relationship between proliferation and replication mechanism in detail within one group, the intracisternal A-type particles (IAPs), and performing simple correlations across all ERV lineages, we show that when ERVs lose the env gene their proliferation within that genome is boosted by a factor of ∼30. We also show that ERV abundance follows the Pareto principle or 20/80 rule, with ∼20% of lineages containing 80% of the loci. This rule is observed in many biological systems, including infectious disease epidemics, where commonly ∼20% of the infected individuals are responsible for 80% of onward infection. We thus borrow simple epidemiological and ecological models and show that retrotransposition and loss of env is the trait that leads endogenous retroviruses to becoming genomic superspreaders that take over a significant proportion of their host’s genome.

I love it: retroviruses that choose to spread WITHIN a cell’s genome, rather than between cells.  Safe little niche, as long as it keeps dividing!

See on www.pnas.org

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

“Last year was the worst year for measles in the U.S. in 15 years, health officials said Thursday.

There were 222 cases of measles, a large jump from the 60 or so seen in a typical year. Most of the cases last year were imported — either by foreign visitors or by U.S. residents who picked up the virus overseas.

U.S. children have been getting vaccinated against the measles for about 50 years. But low vaccination rates in Europe and other places resulted in large outbreaks overseas last year.

So far this year, 27 U.S. cases have been reported and it’s too early to gauge whether 2012 will be as bad as last year. But with large international events like the London Olympics coming up, health officials are urging everyone — particularly international travelers — to make sure they’re fully vaccinated.”

And so it begins…the collapse of what used to be near-universal anti-measles vaccination, resulting in re-importation of the virus to places where it had almost been eradicated.

See on www.businessweek.com

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

“Hanoi has asked the World Health Organization for help to cure a virulent disease affecting children. Symptoms include blistering on hands, feet and mouths accompanied by high fever and eventual organ failure.

Nineteen children died from the illness in 2011 alone.
The virus spreads through direct contact with an infected person’s oral discharges or saliva, the fluid from burst blisters or the stool of infected persons.
The Red Cross mission in Vietnam reports the disease has already infected over 28,000 children this year, which is more than 10 times the number of infected children in the same period last year.
According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), last year a record 110,000 children became infected, with 169 deaths.
The hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) disease mostly affects children under three years old (80 per cent of totals cases) the Red Cross said. There is no known treatment for HFMD.”

The virus is EV71, a picornavirus similar to the polioviruses and hepatitis A virus – so hardly a “mystery virus”.  There are also a number of vaccines in the pipeline for the disease, including one highlighted here a while ago.

See on rt.com

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

Usutu virus (USUV) is an African mosquito-borne flavivirus, member of the Japanese encephalitis antigenic group. This avian virus is transmitted by arthropod vectors (mainly mosquitoes of the Culex pipiens complex). It is well known that free-living birds, including migratory species, have the potential to disperse certain pathogenic microorganisms. Usutu virus has recently been introduced to Europe and is spreading through Austria, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, causing disease in birds and humans. Like West Nile virus, USUV may become a resident pathogen in Europe and the consequences for public health should be considered. Many different biotic and abiotic factors affect the survival of the virus in a new environment and influence the efficiency of its geographical dispersal

See on www.eurosurveillance.org

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

“I have just created an animation of a rotating influenza virus. The sequence begins with a still of the cutaway virus with various parts labelled. The labels disappear and the virus rotates, then returns to the starting graphic. This is in high definition and looks good full screen on a 27″ iMac. It is the latest addition to my YouTube Channel.”

Definitely, graphics courtesy of Russell Kightley Media…B-)  STRONGLY commended!

See on blog.kightleys.com

See on Scoop.it – Virology News

A new study, published in PLoS Computational Biology, shows how worries over vaccine risks can allow preventable contagious diseases, such as measles and whooping cough, to make a comeback.

I remember commenting, some 17 years ago, that people in Kikwit should be more concerned than people in the urban USA about Ebola risks from the outbreak then occurring – but probably weren’t, largely because they knew that spread required contact, AND they had no internet to spread the panic.  Virally…in fact, one correspondent coined the term “Ebola Preston” to account for the fear-of-virus propagated by Richard Preston, whose book “The Hot Zone” piggy-backed the Ebola epidemic to huge sales.

The bottom line is that people who obsess about safety of vaccines are the ones who are themselves almost certainly protected because THEIR parents followed public health guidleines – but they will be opening their kids up to all of the old scourges that they themselves were protected against.

Because they are functionally STUPID.

See on www.eurekalert.org