Virus World

No other emerging pathogen is known to have jumped so frequently from species to species. A virus that killed a six-year-old boy in 1965 has also infected bonobos and chimpanzees in an unprecedented case of viral ‘ping-pong’ between species.

James Chodosh at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, Donald Seto at George Mason University in Manassas, Virginia, and their colleagues reconstructed the history of a long-stored sample of adenovirus, a type of virus that causes colds and other illnesses. By tracking the small changes that accumulated in the virus’s genome when it infected new species, the researchers found that it had previously lived in bonobos (Pan paniscus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and humans.

The analysis also showed that the pathogen was remarkably similar to an adenovirus recently identified in two groups of primates that had never come into contact with each other: bonobos in the San Diego Zoo in California and chimpanzees in a primate research facility in Louisiana. The results suggest that the transmission of adenoviruses to humans from other animals might have an important role in the emergence of pathogens that could harm human health.

The original findings were published in the Journal of Virology: https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00564-19

New UCLA-led research suggests that 32% of children up to the age of 3 years who were exposed to the Zika virus during the mother's pregnancy had below-average neurological development. The study also found that less than 4 percent of 216 children evaluated had microcephaly—a smaller-than-normal head that is one of the hallmarks of the mosquito-borne disease. The heads of two of those children grew to normal size over time, the researchers reported.

The findings, conducted by UCLA researchers with colleagues in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the disease was first detected, as well as in Austria and Germany, are a follow-up to previous research. That study showed substantial neurologic damage identified through developmental testing and neuroimaging in children younger than age two whose mothers were infected with Zika during their pregnancies.

The researchers tested 146 children using the Bayley-III test, an extended neurodevelopmental assessment that checks language, cognitive and motor development. They used the Hammersmith Infant Neurologic Evaluation, or HINE, a less detailed assessment, on the 70 other children whose parents did not wish to take their children in for the lengthy Bayley-III. The researchers found that in the Bayley-III group, 51 children tested for language, 14 tested for cognitive development, and 24 evaluated for motor development scored below average.

The study was published in Nature Medicine today:

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-019-0496-1