An obscure household of viruses, already endemic in wild African primates and recognized to trigger deadly Ebola-like signs in some monkeys, is “poised for spillover” to people.
Evoking parallels to HIV, authors are calling on world well being group to be vigilant.
In keeping with new analysis, an obscure household of viruses, already endemic in wild African primates and recognized to trigger deadly Ebola-like signs in some monkeys, is “poised for spillover” to people. The research, by the College of Colorado Boulder, was printed on-line within the journal Cell on September 30.
“This animal virus has discovered how you can achieve entry to human cells, multiply itself, and escape a number of the vital immune mechanisms we’d anticipate to guard us from an animal virus. That’s fairly uncommon.” — Sara Sawyer
Though such arteriviruses are already thought-about a crucial risk to macaque monkeys, no human infections have been reported so far. As well as, it’s unsure what impression the virus would have on individuals ought to it leap species.
Nonetheless, the authors, evoking parallels to HIV (the precursor of which originated in African monkeys), are calling for vigilance however: By looking forward to arteriviruses now, in each animals and people, the worldwide well being group may probably keep away from one other pandemic, they stated.
“This animal virus has discovered how you can achieve entry to human cells, multiply itself, and escape a number of the vital immune mechanisms we’d anticipate to guard us from an animal virus. That’s fairly uncommon,” stated senior writer Sara Sawyer. She is a professor of molecular, mobile and developmental biology at CU Boulder. “We must be being attentive to it.”
There are millions of distinctive viruses circulating amongst animals across the globe, and most of them trigger no signs within the host. Growing numbers of those viruses have jumped to people in latest a long time, wreaking havoc on naïve immune programs with no expertise preventing them off. This consists of Center Jap Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012, Extreme Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in 2003, and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in 2020.
Sara Sawyer. Credit; UC Boulder
For 15 years, Sawyer’s lab has used laboratory techniques and tissue samples from wildlife from around the globe to investigate which animal viruses may be prone to jump to humans.
For the latest study, she and first author Cody Warren, then a postdoctoral fellow at the BioFrontiers Institute at CU, zeroed in on arteriviruses. These are common among pigs and horses but understudied among nonhuman primates. Specifically, they looked at simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV), which causes a lethal disease similar to the Ebola virus disease. Dating back to the 1960s, it has been causing deadly outbreaks in captive macaque colonies.
According to the research, a molecule, or receptor, called CD163, is crucial to the biology of simian arteriviruses, enabling the virus to invade and cause infection of target cells. Through a series of laboratory experiments, the scientists discovered, much to their surprise, that the virus was also remarkably skilled at latching on to the human version of CD163, getting inside human cells, and quickly making copies of itself.
Like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and its precursor simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), simian arteriviruses also appear to attack immune cells. This means they can disable key defense mechanisms and take hold in the body long-term.
“Just because we haven’t diagnosed a human arterivirus infection yet doesn’t mean that no human has been exposed. We haven’t been looking.” — Cody Warren
“The similarities are profound between this virus and the simian viruses that gave rise to the HIV pandemic,” said Warren. He is now an assistant professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine at The Ohio State University.
The authors stress that another pandemic is not imminent, and the public should not be alarmed.
However, they do suggest that the global health community prioritize the further study of simian arteriviruses and develop blood antibody tests for them. They should also consider surveillance of human populations with close contact with animal carriers.
An expansive variety of African monkeys already carry high viral loads of diverse arteriviruses, often without symptoms. Additionally, some species frequently interact with humans and are known to bite and scratch people.
“Just because we haven’t diagnosed a human arterivirus infection yet doesn’t mean that no human has been exposed. We haven’t been looking,” said Warren.
Warren and Sawyer note that in the 1970s, no one had heard of HIV either.
Scientists now know that HIV likely originated from SIVs infecting nonhuman primates in Africa, likely jumping to humans sometime in the early 1900s.
When it began killing young men in the United States in the 1980s, no serology test existed, and no treatments were in the works.
Sawyer said there is no guarantee that these simian arteriviruses will jump to humans. But one thing is for sure: More viruses will jump to humans, and they will cause disease.
“COVID is just the latest in a long string of spillover events from animals to humans, some of which have erupted into global catastrophes,” Sawyer said. “Our hope is that by raising awareness of the viruses that we should be looking out for, we can get ahead of this so that if human infections begin to occur, we’re on it quickly.”
Reference: “Primate hemorrhagic fever-causing arteriviruses are poised for spillover to humans” by Cody J. Warren, Shuiqing Yu, Douglas K. Peters, Arturo Barbachano-Guerrero, Qing Yang, Bridget L. Burris, Gabriella Worwa, I-Chueh Huang, Gregory K. Wilkerson, Tony L. Goldberg, Jens H. Kuhn and Sara L. Sawyer, 30 September 2022, Cell.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.09.022
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