A study released The scientific journal The New England Journal of Medicine on August 4 said 35 people in two eastern China provinces, Henan and Shandong, have been infected with a new virus. This is the henipavirus, also called langya, of animal origin.
According to the publication, the main symptoms include fever, fatigue, cough, headache and muscle pain, and nausea. There is no evidence of it being transmitted between humans and no deaths have been reported.
The article states that “a phylogenetically distinct henipavirus, termed Langya henipavirus (LayV), was identified in a patient’s throat swab specimen by metagenomic analysis followed by virus isolation.”
Continuing their investigations, they observed “35 patients with acute LayV infection in Shandong and Henan provinces in China, 26 of whom were infected with LayV alone (no other pathogens were present)”.
The researchers also tried to look for possible animals that could have transmitted the virus to humans, since it is not a pathogen that circulates between humans. They found the genetic material of the virus in three of the 168 goats analyzed and in four of the 79 dogs examined.
By extending the analysis to include small wild animals, genetic material was found in 71 shrews (small insectivorous mammals) of the 262 shrews (small insectivorous mammals) analyzed, accounting for 27% of the total. This suggests, the authors say, “that the shrew might be a natural reservoir of this pathogen.”
The research group also reports that no humantohuman transmission has been reported for the Nipah virus of the same family, minimizing that possibility for Langya. “There was no close contact or history of exposure that was common among patients, suggesting that the infection may be sporadic in the human population. Screening of nine patients with 15 close family members revealed no transmission of LayV through close contact, but our sample size was too small to determine the humantohuman transmission status for LayV.”
In Taiwan, Deputy DirectorGeneral of the Center for Disease Control Chuang Jenhsiang told the Taipei Times that although there is no evidence of humantohuman transmission, the territory will work on developing a test for genetic material to test to recognize this the virus.