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May 29th, 2009 10:21 AM #1ATLANTA — Scientists have identified a lethal new virus in Africa that causes bleeding like the dreaded Ebola virus.
The so-called "Lujo" virus infected five people in Zambia and South Africa last fall. Four of them died, but a fifth survived, perhaps helped by a medicine recommended by the scientists.
It's not clear how the first person became infected, but the bug comes from a family of viruses found in rodents, said Dr. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist involved in the discovery.
"This one is really, really aggressive" he said of the virus.
A paper on the virus by Lipkin and his collaborators was published online Thursday on in PLoS Pathogens.
The outbreak started in September, when a female travel agent who lives on the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia, became ill with a fever-like illness that quickly grew much worse.
She was airlifted to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she died.
A paramedic in Lusaka who treated her also became sick, was transported to Johannesburg and died. The three others infected were health care workers in Johannesburg.
Investigators believe the virus spread from person to person through contact with infected body fluids.
"It's not a kind of virus like the flu that can spread widely," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped fund the research.
The name given to the virus — "Lujo" — stems from Lusaka and Johannesburg, the cities where it was first identified.
Investigators in Africa thought the illness might be Ebola, because some of the patients had bleeding in the gums and around needle injection sites, said Stuart Nichol, chief of the molecular biology lab in the CDC's Special Pathogens Branch. Other symptoms include include fever, shock, coma and organ failure.
Samples of blood and liver from the victims were sent to the United States, where they were tested at Columbia University in New York and at CDC in Atlanta. Tests determined it belonged to the arenavirus family, and that it is distantly related to Lassa fever, another disease found in Africa.
The drug ribavirin, which is given to Lassa victims, was given to the fifth Lujo virus patient — a Johannesburg nurse. It's not clear if the medicine made a difference or if she just had a milder case of the disease, but she fully recovered, Nichol said.
The research is a startling example of how quickly scientists can now identify new viruses, Fauci said. Using genetic sequencing techniques, the virus was identified in a matter of a few days — a process that used to take weeks or longer.
Along with Fauci's institute, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Google also helped fund the research. - AP
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May 29th, 2009 10:33 AM #2
fortunately, Ebola or Ebola-like viruses kill very fast, so spread is limited
it can't spread far from ground zero coz it kills its host so fast it runs out of hosts to infect
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May 29th, 2009 12:36 PM #3
+1 ... that is one major thing going for us if the virus kills its host too fast. The spread of infection is normally very limited to the immediate area.
BUT the problem too with ebola is it can survive in the environment and persist as a dry powder, ready to infect it's victim when it is breathed into the lungs.
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May 29th, 2009 12:52 PM #4
and the reason why the AIDS virus was able to spread all around the world is coz it takes 8-10 years for the virus to kill its host
the hosts have plenty of time to infect others
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May 29th, 2009 01:04 PM #6
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May 29th, 2009 02:31 PM #8
hay naku. Ingat na lang. Lalo na at 14 na ang may swine flu dito sa pinas
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May 29th, 2009 06:05 PM #9
Yeah I heard about that too. The victims were attending a gathering in Zambales wherein the host, a sick Taiwanese woman, was also attending.
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May 29th, 2009 06:36 PM #10
According sa brochure, meron Auto UP/DOWN yan. Baka kailangan relearn. Nabubura yan after ma...
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