On August 4, a Chinese research team announced that they had discovered the Langya virus that causes zoonotic diseases. Langya virus is believed to be transmitted to humans through shrews. GIB provided
An animal virus that can infect humans, such as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), has been identified in eastern China. According to a report by the international academic journal Nature on the 11th (local time), the consensus of scientists is that there is no need to worry too much because the virus has not yet spread between humans and is not fatal.
The newly discovered and reported virus is ‘LayV’, a type of henipavirus, one of the RNA viruses. It causes respiratory symptoms such as fever, cough and fatigue. On the 12th, research results were published that showed that the Gamak virus and Daeryong virus are genetically similar to the Gamak virus and Daeryong virus discovered by Song Jin-won, a professor at Korea University Medical School in Korea last year.
The existence of Langya virus was first revealed to the world through a paper published in the International Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on August 4 by a research team from the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in China. The research team believes that the langya virus may have been transmitted to humans through hosts such as Ussuri shrews and small shrews.
There is still no evidence that langyavirus is transmitted from person to person. The research team conducted monitoring of fever patients at three hospitals in Shandong and Henan provinces in eastern China from April 2018 to August last year. However, since this study conducted epidemiological investigations on only 9 patients and 15 members of their family, additional investigations are needed to make an accurate judgment.
The 35 patients infected with the langyavirus were identified, mostly as farmers. Symptoms varied from coughing to severe pneumonia, but the common symptom was fever. Most of them had contact with animals within a month of symptom onset.
The research team conducted virus tests on goats, dogs, pigs and cattle in the village where the patient lived, captured 25 species of wild animals, and collected tissue and urine samples to confirm. As a result, langyavirus antibodies were present in some goats and dogs, and langyavirus RNA was detected in 27% of a total of 262 mice. This means that they are all infected or infected with the virus. This suggests that shrews are the hosts of the virus.
It is still unclear how the langyavirus spread to humans. Experts point out that even though the fatality rate is not high, it seems clear that the number of cases of zoonotic infectious diseases affecting our lives is increasing with this case. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 60% of new infectious diseases that have occurred since the 20th century have come from animals.
Jin-won Song, a professor of microbiology at Korea University College of Medicine, said, “Viruses usually stay in their hosts, but RNA viruses, like langyaviruses, continue to mutate and at some point come a moment when they cross the barrier between species. As the number of infections increases, the possibility of zoonotic infectious diseases becoming a problem is also increasing,” he said.
Edward Holmes, a professor at the University of Sydney in Australia, said in an interview with Nature that there is no need to be particularly concerned yet, but that people and animals must be constantly monitored for new viruses. Professor Song also said, “There has been no case of human-to-human transmission of the Langya virus yet, and it does not appear to be fatal.